“Here I was, standing on a sand dune in Belgium, drinking a powerful Praline Chocolate Porter. Everything started to make perfect sense.”

'Cross may not be coming - for a while yet, at least - but that doesn't mean we can't daydream about days spent mucking around in the mud. For our latest Longreads Podcast we've turned back the clock to November to tell the story of when, for the Belgian special of Rouleur magazine, we sent our hedonism correspondents, The Deserter, to Koksijde. There they were not only witness, for the first time in their lives, to the thrills and spills of cycling on sand, but were flung face-first into the full-on Flandrian fan experience.

Fortunately for us - or perhaps thanks to chaperone Ian Cleverly - Dirty South and The Dulwich Raider lived to tell the tale.

The Rouleur Longreads Podcast brings you selected long form articles from the magazine, especially recorded for Rouleur. Don't stop what you're doing - do it while listening to the world's best cycling writing.

The sixth in this series is ‘Deserter's Dirty Weekend’ by Andrew Grumbridge for Deserter, from Rouleur 20.2. Read by Andrew Grumbridge.

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