Change Of Perception
Discover why Lebanon is the best ride destination you haven’t thought of – yet
Lebanon in the Middle East is not the obvious choice as a cycling destination, but with wild mountains, historic towns and amazing food, perhaps it should be
There are certain things that can reinforce a sense of achievement after a long climb: a spectacular view, tired legs or even a number on a cycling computer. For me, at an unassuming building on the side of a dusty mountain, it’s the clouds below me obscuring all but the last few kilometers of the road I’ve spent all morning climbing. Sat in the cool shade, my appetite burning after 1,600m of almost non-stop ascent, I reflect on what a shame it is that Lebanon, with its turbulent recent history, is often written off as a tourist destination, let alone a cycling destination. As amateur cyclists we don’t measure our victories in stage wins or trophies, but in the experiences that make a ride live long in the memory. And I’m not going to forget this ride in a hurry. I think I’ve found the best restaurant in Lebanon.
I didn’t come out to Lebanon with only food and cycling in mind. I had left my job at a London law firm intent on pursuing a dream to be a journalist, and this tiny country on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean, half the size of Wales, continues to attract hacks from all over thanks to its well-connected airport, abundance of translators and fixers waiting for work, and an even greater numbers of bars to drink away the nerves from the latest deadline.
For me, however, it also offered something else. While to my parents’ generation the country was synonymous with conflict, I was taken in by images of cyclists riding beneath clear blue skies over long mountain roads, through waterfalls and forests. When I eventually booked my flight, I booked extra baggage. There was no way I was going without my bike.
Just over a year after my arrival I’m attempting the biggest ride I’ve yet done in Lebanon, a punchy 109km
route with nearly 3,000m of climbing. I’m therefore grateful for the uncharacteristically overcast skies over Byblos, a charming seaside town about 40km north of Beirut that lays claim to being one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. The town is dominated by an imposing Crusader castle, built using the spoils of other civilisations. Roman columns were pirated and built into the walls for strength. Byblos used to be a haven for the great and the good. One restaurant, founded by the enigmatic Pepe, has photographs of the many celebrities to have spent the day at the playboy’s restaurant in the mid-20th century. Of course, the civil war of 1975-1990 put paid to that.
Train, plains and automobiles
I set off south with my riding partner for the day, Rich, a fellow Briton who works in the bike industry here and has organised today’s ride. We follow the route of the old railway line that used to connect Beirut and Lebanon’s second city of Tripoli, which in the early part of the 20th century was a terminus for the Orient Express. The service was halted by the civil war, never to restart. Ghosts of the railway now haunt the Seaside Road – a rusting bridge or
a section of track nudge through the tarmac at an intersection, reminders of a time when Lebanon was but a small canton in the sprawling Ottoman empire.
We make a quick stop for a breakfast man’oucheh, a pizza-like flatbread covered in a thyme and olive oil paste, in preparation for the climbing to come. The cafe owner tells us that the railway operators were recently given a pay rise. ‘There hasn’t been an accident on the line for 30 years,’ he says.
After 7km of rolling along the coast we take a left turn up into the mountains, leaving the Mediterranean, and the last flat road of the ride, behind us. Ahead of us is a climb that rarely lets up for the next 36km, taking us from sea level to well above 1,500m.
Almost immediately the road kicks up as the two sides of the valley stretch up above us. The gradient of the climb averages around 7%, and some of the switchbacks on the southern side of the valley hit 15%. Fortunately my legs feel good at this early stage of the ride, and the first kilometres, taken at a relaxed pace, are fairly easy going.
‘There’s never traffic on this road,’ Rich says, surprised, as a number of cars overtake us, but we’ve forgotten it’s Eid. Lebanese of every religious denomination are enjoying the long weekend and are taking advantage of the valley’s dramatic beauty. Children are already swimming in the mountain river.
As the road to Beirut starts to turn back on itself we take a sharp left, committing ourselves further into the mountains. These smaller roads are blissfully quiet, but a lone petrolhead below us is also enjoying the space, sending loud revs echoing around the otherwise peaceful
We take a left turn up into the mountains, leaving the last flat road of the ride behind us
mountainsides. We get glimpses of the valley stretching out below us, while above us is dense grey cloud.
The villages here are mostly Christian. Each has a church, with a handful of locals milling around after the morning mass. The orange flags of one of the main Christian political parties bedeck the electricity posts, relics of the recent parliamentary elections. We pass one poster with an image of the sombre-looking Maronite monk Mar Charbel, with a caption that reads, ‘My vote is for you.’
We continue to climb, and the road narrows further. It’s an afterthought, built with local farmers in mind rather than cyclists. The surface is poor and by the end it’s ramping up to more than 20%.
‘I’m glad that’s over,’ Rich tells me when we arrive with short breath at the top of the section. Ever the optimist, he adds, ‘At least we’ve got more downhill than uphill still to go.’
The Lebanese pro
With climbs like this concentrated in such a small area, it’s a wonder Lebanon hasn’t produced more Grand Tour contenders, but remarkably there has been only one Lebanese cyclist to make his mark on the cycling scene.
Tarek Abou Zahab grew up in Lebanon in the mid-20th century. With little opportunity to race competitively in Lebanon or the region, he moved to France in 1960, and in 1962 became the first and only rider to ever compete
non- With a vertical kilometre of largely stop climbing in the legs, we’re starting to suffer. I reckon we’ve got another 15 minutes to go
solo in the Peace Race, the most competitive stage race on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain, and open to amateurs.
While all the other riders raced in six-strong national teams, Abou Zahab, unable to persuade the Lebanese Cycling Federation to send a team, raced alone. His underdog story captured the hearts and minds of the local fans, who turned out in their thousands to see the plucky young Lebanese rider. He could hold his own with the best of them on the road stages, but inevitably lost minutes in the team time-trial, competing as a team of one.
Abou Zahab’s glory days live on only in the memories of a few older local riders and in the yellowing newspaper cuttings on the walls of his Beirut bike shop, but the mountains that gave rise to his success have gone nowhere. We wind through another section of the valley and the clouds start to break around us. Despite the sun, it’s not overly hot, which is welcome as the climb has by no means finished with us yet.
With a vertical kilometre of largely non-stop climbing already in the legs, we’re starting to suffer. I pull out my phone and, using the map, make a quick guess as to the remainder of the climb. I reckon we’ve got another 15 minutes or so to go, I reassure Rich.
A victim of the cycling industry’s online revolution, Rich was forced to close his local bike shop in Kent when he was no longer able to compete with the prices offered by the online giants. Lebanon might not seem the obvious next step for someone with a long career in cycling, but its unremarkable postal service, combined with headacheinducing import regulations, means that the cycling market is dominated by bricks-and-mortar shops. Rich now works at a sports shop as their resident bike guru, and knows the Lebanese roads better than most locals.
The best part of an hour later we’re still climbing through a thickly forested area known as Mar Moussa, and I can tell my riding partner is cursing me silently. I normally struggle to hold his wheel on long climbs like this, but he’s been kept off the bike for a few weeks by a combination of a nasty summer cold and a busy work schedule. We push on with the summit in sight, but we know we’re not breaking any records long before a farmer on an ancient red Massey Ferguson tractor overtakes us.
The best restaurant in Lebanon
After four hours in the saddle – three and a half of them since leaving the gentle coast road – we finally summit the climb. We come out onto a ridge, and in the distance to our right we can see the green slopes of Faraya, which in the winter is Lebanon’s premier ski resort.
The long climb has left us hungry, and it’s here, after a short descent, that we pull up outside the small, tattered building where a sign above the door, written in looping Arabic script, promises home-cooked food. The building is pieced together with concrete breezeblocks and corrugated iron sheets and the awning above my head is little more than old bamboo bound together with wire.
While the restaurant and its balcony are modest, the views are anything but as we sit down at a plastic table. Vines and orchards stretch away below us. Making our way through the gargantuan spread – flatbreads baked on a convex ‘saj’ drum, creamy hummus, fresh tabbouleh, a smoky aubergine baba ghanouj – we try not to indulge too heavily, reminding ourselves we’re still not yet halfway.
Once finished, we ask for the (very reasonable) bill and our host, a genial man with a moustache extending almost past the brim of his straw hat, brings out a bowl of apricots, pock-marked by hail but delicious nonetheless, and some very welcome, and very strong, Lebanese coffee.
Well fed and slightly rested, we continue towards the heart of Mount Lebanon. We’re descending swiftly with the mountain on our right when Rich picks up a puncture going through a patch of sand on the road hiding a number of sharp rocks. He draws on his many years of racing
All of a sudden the tarmac comes to an end and we’re riding Lebanon’s version of strade bianche
experience with a lightning-quick tube change, and we’re underway again in under five minutes.
We’re heading towards a sharp bend in the road in a village called Afqa, which sits snug in a groove in the side of the mountain. Many of the slopes here are too steep for foliage, exposing multicoloured buttresses of rock rippling through the natural amphitheatre. All of a sudden the tarmac comes to an end and we’re riding Lebanon’s version of strade bianche. Most of the roads here are perfectly rideable, albeit with the odd pothole to keep you on your toes. Occasionally, however, the road runs out and you find yourself in the middle of a construction site. Still, it’s nothing that 25mm tyres can’t handle, and after a few minutes of chasing car tracks we reach Afqa.
As the road curves around the mountainside, a vast waterfall cascades below the village into a pool. There’s
We descend into the darkness of a valley, going as fast as the available light and the road surface will allow
plenty of life here. Eid has many families out enjoying lunch in the restaurants above the cliff now the fast is over.
Homeward bound
We head towards the base of the day’s less punishing second climb, which winds up the mountain in long, sweeping turns towards the diminutive but very pretty ski resort of Laqlouq. As we climb the valley extends for miles to our left with the cliffs falling from the plateau of Mount Lebanon, which runs along the spine of the country.
We reach Laqlouq and the highest point of the ride at well over 1,700m. From here it’s all downhill, which is lucky as the sun is beginning to dip behind the surrounding peaks and we’ve still got over 40km to cover. We waste no time and descend into the darkness of a valley, going as fast as the available light and the road surface will allow.
We reach the village of Tannourine, which sits below one of the last remaining cedar groves in the country. The historical reason for the decline of the trees tells that they were harvested to near-extinction by the various civilisations that have passed through Lebanon. Many, such as the Phoenicians, prized the hard cedar wood for use in shipbuilding. If you take the ancient Mesopotamian epic tale of Gilgamesh as your source, however, the trees were first destroyed by Gilgamesh himself, who defeated the demigod Humbaba, guardian of the cedar groves, and made off with the wood to make a gate for the city of Nippur in what is now Iraq.
Road laws are more like guidelines in Lebanon, and on one corner I overtake most of a family – a man and three children – on one motorbike. We’re in and out of the sunlight, and at one point the road drops down the valley in a double-hairpin, taking us back into the shadows. My eyes take a few seconds to adjust to the light as I try to stay on Rich’s wheel. He may not have his climbing legs today, but he’s proving as difficult as ever to keep in touch with on the descents.
The slopes are steep on either side of us in this higher part of the valley. In the Qadisha Valley just to our north, the rugged, inhospitable terrain has sheltered Christian communities for centuries, lending a degree of protection from the various dynasties that swept through the region.
We arrive at our end point, an independent microbrewery with a bar on the beach
As we get closer to the coast and the ride’s end the road opens out, but by this time it’s almost free of traffic. In the last rays of sunlight, Rich and I take turns battling the evening breeze, our tired legs aided by the gradient.
Some short, sharp uphill sections punctuate the descent, obscuring the Mediterranean and our destination. Sections of the hillsides are covered in the corduroy of vineyards – this is the one of the largest wine-making region in the country. Eventually we crest a rise and look out over our destination, the town of Batroun. A frugal delivery man on a motorbike is taking this part of the descent with his engine off, and as we spin out the last few kilometers of downhill, Rich cruises by him easily.
With the sun having disappeared behind the clouds we arrive at our end point, an independent microbrewery with a bar on the beach. We step out onto the wooden pier that extends into the sea, the air cool on our sun-beaten faces.
I take a long sip of a crisp beer, brewed on the shores of this ancient Phoenician town. The ride has taken us through a Lebanon far removed from the news stories. We reminisce over the day’s ride, the scenery and of course our discovery of the best restaurant in Lebanon. On the bike, we make our own headlines. Finbar Anderson is a British journalist who wants more cyclists to visit Lebanon