Bicycles or cycling | The Basque Journal

The appointment is at the Copenhagen City Hall, right at the finish line. We go by subway, Radhuspladsen station. White shirts bought yesterday on Strøget street, take us to the second floor. We are greeted by a councilor who we thought would be fourth-rate, but may be third-rate. It takes us a minute to realize that we are talking about different things. Impossible not to remember the movie ‘Airbag’: «Let’s discuss the concept in order to discuss it». The concept, the important thing is the concept.

We have come to talk about cycling and the councilor talks about bicycles, which is not the same thing. «To give you an idea -he tells us-, the Queen Luisa bridge, the one that the time trial crosses just after the first curve to the left, is the road with the highest cyclist density in the world. Every day 40,000 people pass through there by bike.

These people have organized the Tour to tell the world that they are the country of the bicycle, they don’t care much about the race. It is a commitment to sustainability and ecology, not sport. He gives us the dossier of the Grand Départ, but it is not going to solve the rest of the Tour, as we dreamed. He points to the page where we read that there are 12,000 kilometers of cycle paths in Denmark and 673,000 bikes in Copenhagen alone (570,000 inhabitants), where 44% of trips are made by bike. With the weather!

In other words, this Tour outing is about cycling as a lifestyle. In Euskadi it was about cycling, so we will have to give the Danish report a spin and adapt it. The truth is that the city is a constant tide of cyclists, everyone rides a bike (‘lady, watch where you’re going’). We rented one – what a difference, last year we would have walked – to go see the little mermaid.

– That is?

– It seems.

Perfect, there will be no problems. Copenhagen is not bad, but next to Bilbao… It will be child’s play to justify what it costs for the Tour to leave the Basque Country next year.