Marly Grav

Marly Grav bills itself as the ultimate gravel weekender, and it has the credentials: its Sunday race is the Dutch round of the UCI Gravel World Series, where the top quarter of each age category earns a place at the Worlds, and recent editions have drawn road stars such as Tim Wellens, Lorena Wiebes and Wout van Aert onto its dusty farm tracks.

The territory is South Limburg, the hilly corner of the Netherlands, where gravel tracks climb and drop through farmland and woods around Valkenburg. The signature moment belongs to the Saturday Fest: a passage through the Municipal Cave, a marl quarry beneath the town, which the organisers describe as the only gravel ride in the world through such a cave, and which gave the event its name after it started life as Gravel Fondo Limburg.

Everything starts from the Shimano Experience Center, which turns into a festival village for three days. The Fest is the relaxed side of the weekend, with routes for every level, feed zones, coffee at the start and beer at the finish, while the race on Sunday is for riders who want to measure themselves against the best.