Ouwe Brandtoren Reusel
100 - 200 kilometres
Forests, sand & gravel

Brabant - Hundreds of people have gone before you along this controversial route. They, searching for a passage to bridge the border between war and peace. Living their goal of reaching the 'finish'. Yes, the first frontier finish has a brilliant contemporary side for you as a first first, as well as a dark shadow in which at least a thousand people died. Clothe your bicycle with profile tyres, lycra around your body, put on your fiet shoes and follow in the footsteps of those who tried to survive the First World War by reaching neutral Holland.

What has historically been called the Death Wire will be revived today as a cycling classic. One that takes you past the border posts between the Netherlands and Belgium. The Death Wire was a terrifying barrier to prevent spies and refugees from reaching the Netherlands. Brutal, but at the same time effective! Indeed, anyone who wanted to cross to the promised land awaited an obstacle of at least 2,000 volts! Just to talk about cross-border stories...

''I find borders fascinating anyway'', ponders time trialist Jos van Emden. So it is not for nothing that the border posts have been given a prominent role in his life. What started as a lark, a way to liven up the sometimes boring training sessions, has become a guideline of his tours and thoughts. Jos even has a notebook where he neatly keeps track of which boundary post he has managed to add to his mileage.
,,I try to find as many of them as possible by driving a route that crosses the border every time. And you know? You don't notice anything at all! Before, when the borders were strictly demarcated, but now nothing changes when crossing. You don't hear it, you don't feel it, at most you see different vegetation and infrastructure if you pay attention.''

Without noticing, Jos rolls from Belgium to the Netherlands and back again. The electric wire fence with which the Germans once hermetically sealed off the country is a thing of the past. There is no more 'tension'. The world seems one. Like the peloton, Jos continues his thinking. ,,In sport, boundaries blur enormously. When I look at the guys I ride with, I know they have different nationalities, but above all I see the same goal. A Spaniard is no different from a Russian, we are all human.

No battling peloton at dangerously high speeds for you today. Indeed, the ride requires concentration as you cross the many gravel and sandy paths. By the way, this Strade Bianche is also great to do on your road bike with 28 mm tyres, because you have a choice of 2 routes; soft gravel or hardcore gravel and sand! Pay attention to the playful surface as well as the versatile scenery.
Starting at the Ouwe Brandtoren, in the middle of the woods in Reusel, where a fresh sun will still be low at the start, sending artful lightffects into the meadows. Shadows and dead silence reign in the beautiful border area. Before you know it, you want to be out of the saddle with enthusiasm as you approach the border. Something that was different about a hundred years ago.

The tiniest crack of the leaves could give you away even then. With any luck, there was no heavily armed occupier on that stretch. After all, that would mean you could never again attempt to beat the wire. Well, where we now happily loop the finest of two countries together, spies, refugees and smugglers had to pay with their lives for entering Holland here. More than a thousand slaughteroffers, desperate and frightened people, as well as ignorant civilians who did not know the existence of power wires lost their lives on the route you are driving now.
All the more reason to be glad that today we only have boundary posts. Not to defeat, but to greet. They await us without judgement. Ask no questions and have no demands. We may go from country to country again and again. And so we turn along the beautiful Brabant roads through wooded areas from Hamont-Achel to estate de Utrecht near Hilvarenbeek.