L’enfer du Nord Winter Cap by Red Dots Cycling.
Derivation of the name, as described by Whitstable Printworks:
”First run in 1896, Paris-Roubaix was initially conceived as a “leg loosener” for Bordeaux-Paris that, at the time, was considered the most important spring time race. Despite being half the distance of this race, Paris-Roubaix soon became an entity in itself on account of its sheer brutality. It quickly gained a diabolical reputation on account of the route traversing unpaved forest roads and cobblestone tracks that were often made all the worse due to the rain and wind that would batter the peloton as it swept in from the North Sea.
Now well established, it wasn’t until an enforced four year hiatus due to the First World War, which the race gained its most notorious and descriptive nickname “L’Enfer du Nord”. In 1919, six months after the Armistice, the race began its twentieth edition and followed the line of the Western Front. Passing through towns and countryside ravaged by war and death and entombed under grey, sombre skies one journalist penned the race as being in “the Hell of the North” and the nickname stuck ever since.
Today, years after the passing of the First World War, the peloton still has to combat much of the same terrain as it struggles across the infamous pave of northern France. Despite time easing the travesty of war there remains a spectre over this race that adds to its drama and cements its claim as the most important and toughest one day race on the calendar.”
