Grand designs
Copenhagen’s world-beating network of bike lanes delivers us into the city’s rural lanes
Nobody has ever won the Tour de France, the world’s biggest bike race, by accident. Run over 21 stages, through windy flatlands, over rough cobbles and lung-busting mountains, by the time the race reaches its crescendo in Paris the rider in possession of the yellow jersey is always a deserving winner.
The victor of the 2022 race, Denmark and Jumbo- Visma’s Jonas Vingegaard, was no exception. Though hailing from one of the flattest countries on the planet (170m, at its most lofty), he emerged as the finest climber in the race, and part of one of the more formidable teams in the race’s long history, whose battering ram-strength – spearheaded by the remarkable Wout van Aert – played no small part in the fastest Tour ever.
It was also no accident that the crowd that turned out in Copenhagen for his triumphant homecoming was of a size more often seen in coronations and royal weddings. This is a nation that celebrates the bike in all its forms, from its outsized success in pro cycling to the everyday commuters riding to work and school in some of the most cyclable towns and cities on Earth. Yet Denmark didn’t become a byword for safe, commuter-centric cycling by chance, but by forward thinking and carefully calibrated design.
Three weeks prior to the mild-mannered Vingegaard stepping out onto that Copenhagen balcony to a cacophony, Cycling Plus visited Copenhagen for the Tour de France Grand Départ to witness first-hand how good cyclists there have it.
All around the world
On the face of it, the Tour and Copenhagen were a perfect fit: the world’s biggest bike race in the world’s best city to ride a bike. However, the planet-friendly action of pedalling around town is totally at odds with an operation with the carbon footprint of Goliath’s size 56s. The Tour de France, in 2022, has a stubborn inability – see the conga-like race caravan that doles out tat to spectators – to move with the times. These differences became all the starker on stage 10, in France, with the unseemly sight of police and race officials dragging climate protestors off the road.
Beneath the pinnacle of the sport, however, the use of the bike for transport and sport are more intertwined. More than a third of all trips to work and study are made by bike in Copenhagen, a city of 650,000, while each day, cumulatively, its residents ride around the world 35 times. Many of these commuters will cycle for leisure, too. One of those was my guide for the ride, Klara Sofie Hansen, a 19-year old from Copenhagen, who races mountain bikes.
She had been waiting for this weekend for some time. The Grand Départ here had been shuffled back from 2021, when the pandemic’s arrival pushed football’s Euros back a year and meant it would have clashed with football in the city. This time, said Klara, the race was being held on the same weekend as the Roskilde music festival, one of Europe’s biggest and best, staged just down the road, which she felt would have hoovered up a lot of younger people who might otherwise have wanted to watch the racing.
After such a long wait, and a long spell of hotter than-usual weather up to that point in the summer, it rained torrentially throughout the opening-stage time trial. “I showed up to the race in only shorts and a T-shirt,” she would tell me later. “I wouldn’t dare leave my spot to get a jacket or go inside. It was my spot and I was keeping it. I was soaked by the end of the day but I have absolutely no regrets!”
Like many Danes I spoke to, she took immense pride at seeing her city in the spotlight: “The atmosphere was next level, beyond anything I’ve experienced in my home city. Especially as a bike rider, it was so cool to see all kinds of people supporting the sport – especially the Danish riders.”
Before all that, though, Klara took me out for a ride, introducing me to the quirks of riding in the city, as well as the country lanes north of town, on which Copenhagen roadies let loose. The first thing to say is that, while hiring a city bike here is a doddle, hiring a
More than a third of all trips to work and study are made by bike in Copenhagen, a city of 650,000 inhabitants sports bike here is not. I didn’t want to take my own bike out there, given the uncertainty that Brexit has cast upon travelling into the EU with one, so a big thanks to Canyon, whose local team there furnished me with their Aeroad CF SLX.
Capital gains
Across the past thirty years in Cycling Plus’ Big Ride pages, there haven’t been many that have even started in major towns, let alone capital cities. I remember a ride that started and finished in central London in 2015, just not particularly fondly. Copenhagen is different. There are 350km of bike lanes here. It’s a proper, considered, connected network, with over 200km of cycle superhighways – a figure that’s planned to quadruple by 2045.
The current network refrains from that very British bike-lane habit of separating you from traffic for the briefest of moments, only to spit you out into it without warning. London has, admittedly, seen its infrastructure boosted with cycling superhighways, the most comprehensive ranking of bike-friendly cities in the world and created in 2011 by the eponymous Copenhagen-based bicycle city planning firm, London doesn’t feature in its published top 20 (Copenhagen has come out on top since 2015 in the biannual survey, in a continuous jostle with Amsterdam and Utrecht).
Bike lanes here come in many shapes and sizes; what jumped out at me most were how many lanes were one-way and moving with the traffic, how many lanes were separated from traffic by a row of parked cars and the green bike lights at traffic lights, which allow cyclists to get ahead of motorists at junctions and stay safe. On a weekday morning rush hour, riders buzz around the lanes like bees in a hive and if you’re dropped into this melee without experience of it, it takes some getting used to. Me, on one of the fastest road bikes in the world, would be left behind at junctions by the sharp-elbowed, wicker-basket crew.
As I’ve mentioned, none of this has happened by accident. Riders are needed to fill the network, but without the network, the number of riders will always be small. It all began here in the 1970s, prompted by something that we’re seeing again now – a fuel crisis – alongside a growing environmental movement. Cars, which had come to dominate the city as much as any major European city, were left on the driveways and curbs as the government rationed oil. The many new cyclists that this produced let to demands for better infrastructure, and bike lanes would eventually become a key pillar in city planning.
Escape to the country
Bike lanes aren’t just the preserve of the city centre here either. Even after segregated lanes took us out of the built-up city, they’d continue to the side of the main roads leading into the city, along smooth, wide tarmac – something that you simply do not see in the UK. It’s only once we got on the country lanes that they disappeared.
Today, one day before the Tour de France started, was, in theory, a good opportunity to ‘pro spot’ on the road: 22 teams were out there, on Copenhagen’s country roads, spinning the legs after days spent travelling and cooped up in city hotels, and at any moment a small peloton could come firing past us. Klara and I didn’t get so lucky, though photographer Chris had Ineos Grenadiers flash past while waiting for us. I don’t know how we missed seeing them, but I was likely distracted after narrowly avoiding being taken out by a roller skier, whose extremely long pole nearly wedged into my front wheel’s spokes as he stumbled and desperately tried to regain his balance.
It all began here in the 1970s, prompted by a fuel crisis, alongside a growing environmental movement
The route meandered all the way to the coast, with the little rises in the road enough for the featherweight Klara to gap me. She’s used to riding with the boys on the road as part of her training group, but has started leading women’s rides, and is enjoying seeing more people fall for the sport.
Vedbæk, on the wealthy suburban coastline north of the city, brought busier roads. One thing I noticed is that while you do get motorists honking their horns in Copenhagen, they feel less aggressive than in the UK, where the horn is a longer, louder alpha play for territory and road superiority. In Copenhagen, like in, say, an Indian city, the horn – a short, sharp beep – seems to be deployed as a means of letting a cyclist know that they are there.
Once we reached the outer limits of the city, we were back in the comforting embrace of Copenhagen cycling infrastructure, which safely funnelled Klara and I back downtown, past the ‘world’s busiest bike bridge’ – Dronning Louise’s Bro, a 135-year-old structure, which has been transformed to turbocharge bike numbers at the expense of motor traffic.
I write this in Blighty on the morning that the Daily Mail, Britain’s best-selling newspaper, led on its front page with the headline ‘Cyclists may need number plates’, and it appears transport secretary Grant Shapps (at time of writing, anyway…) is giving consideration to the preposterous, inflammatory and backwards idea of cyclists needing registration plates on their bikes. On the upside, a car-like plate might stop close passes…
Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, in the sober, non-hysterical Copenhagen, the city’s commuters, whether on bikes or in cars, go forward in relative harmony. It’s a demonstration, made real, of the bike’s possibilities, in a world whose cities become more polluted by the day.
LOCAL KNOWLEDGE
Getting there
Direct flights to Copenhagen are available from many UK airports.
Where to stay
1 During the Tour de France, our room at CitizenM Copenhagen Radhuspladsen
(citizenm.com) cost £200 for a basic double room. They allowed bikes into the room with some gentle persuasion.
Where to eat
2 You could check out number 1 in the 2022 The World’s Best Restaurants Awards: Geranium (“Food meets art”). If your spending is more aligned with Cycling Plus’s expenses account, we can recommend Café Wilder in the atmospheric Christianshavn.
Bike shop
Your trip to Copenhagen is probably best enjoyed on a city bike. Check out visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/ activities/copenhagen-bikerentals.
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Distance 76km
Elevation 358m
Download the route komoot.com/tour/871449747