The Grain

The Grain links two mustard capitals, Düsseldorf and Dijon, on a fully self-supported allroad crossing from Germany into France. From the Schicke Mütze cycling café the route heads across the windy plains around Cologne into the lakes and forests of the Eifel, then through the vineyards and farmland hills of Rhineland-Palatinate before the Vosges bring sharper relief, conifer forest and technical sections, and the last stretch eases off towards Burgundy.

Riders manage their own food, water, repairs and sleep, followed live by GPS tracker, and choose whether to use the whole time limit or push for a faster finish. The surface is roughly half compact gravel and half quiet roads, scouted on 40 mm tyres.

The event grew out of a personal story: artist and co-organiser Pierre-Charles Flipo spent several years in Düsseldorf as part of the Schicke Mütze team before moving to Dijon, and he designed the route himself. Bike-X presented it as a joint project of the Düsseldorf shop, run by Carsten Wien, and Flipo's company scops, conceived as a gesture of Franco-German friendship; the name plays on both mustard seeds and the grains of gravel under the tyres.