Pre-season training camps in mainland Spain, Majorca and the Canary Islands allow pro riders to log valuable miles ahead of a long campaign. Time to set-up base, ride without the concern of snow, driving rain and ice, and fine-tune leadout drills away from the chaos of the peloton.

Thousands of amateur cyclists from all corners of the continent follow in their footsteps and migrate south, be it for a different kind of training camp or a weekend’s social riding. I joined Lotto-Belisol earlier this month at their final pre-season training camp in Benicassim, Spain, and took the opportunity to secure some valuable winter miles of my own.

Not a bad view to wake up to

Winter in the UK is a tough time to be a cyclist and the recent snow that has blanketed training roads across the country is testament to that. But sun soothes the cycling soul and renews motivation, providing the opportunity to kick-start training in January, when so many goals for the year are set.

Southern Europe is not universally warm through winter. Sunshine is not guaranteed: a cold snap can bite, rain fall and snow is not unheard of in the mountains of Majorca.

But the odds are in your favour, and while the winter months are the preserve of pro riders, most amateurs, whether they have their eye on making a name for themselves in the local racing scene, or nailing that big sportive, head abroad in early spring.

All smiles in Spain (© Chris Linaker)

I was particularly lucky for my early January visit to Spain. The chilly early morning air was soon replaced by temperatures approaching 20 degrees. An opportunity to replace a softshell jacket, bib tights and thick gloves with a short sleeve jersey, bib shorts, arm/knee warmers and a light gilet. Blue skies provided the perfect backdrop to explore the countless miles of roads which run through the orange groves, or to ride into the hills which rise to 500m above Benicassim; countless climbs which just don’t exist here.

Now I’m back under sullen skies, regularly checking the weather forecast to find out when the UK will be released from the icy grip under which its currently strangled.

But I’ve already given 2013 an early shot in the arm. There’s light at the end of the tunnel, good miles already in the legs and spring is on the distant horizon. Thinking of booking your own time in the sun? Do it.

Postcards from Spain

Swap cycling under sullen skies for long climbs with sea view

Fast riding on flat roads through the orange groves

An opportunity to explore new roads

The mid-morning coffee stop

High in the hills above Benicassim

A well-tuned train, like the HTC-Highroad juggernaut which delivered Mark Cavendish to countless wins, can be near unbeatable.

But the foundations for such success are laid at a team’s pre-season training camp, where roles are defined and technique is sharpened over leadout drills on empty roads, away from the pinball chaos of the peloton. I’m in Benicassim, Spain, with the Lotto-Belisol team to see just that at the squad´s final training camp before the season begins.

Each leadout drill ends in a one-on-one sprint

Several of the team’s key riders, including Andre Greipel, winner of three Tour de France stages in 2012, and his leadout man, Greg Henderson, have departed for the first race of the season, the Tour Down Under, but 19 of the squad remain in Spain of which nine have leadout drills pencilled in for their day’s training.

The team have swapped the cold, wet winter of northern Europe for sun-drenched Spain, and the ride, which I am watching from the following car, starts with one-and-a-half hours at a steady pace. The atmosphere is relaxed and the chatter flowing among the group as they spin the legs, many riding in the inner ring, albeit at more than 40km/h on silky-smooth roads, and without a breath of wind.

A three kilometre climb stretches the legs but the group remains tightly packed – no riders are shelled out of the back on this training run. The intensity picks up as the riders begin riding through and off, and soon after we arrive at a two kilometre drag strip of quiet road – the training ground for today´s drills: straight and flat, but for a small kick at the end.

The view from the team car

The team’s coach, Bert Ackaert, delivers his orders – six two kilometres intervals with two leadout trains battling it out – and buckets are placed along the road to mark out the distance to the finish; 2km, 1km, 750m, 500m, 250m and the finish line.

Gilets and arm warmers are gradually peeled off as the riders carry out each drill under the warm sun, with Ackaert offering feedback and advising on new leadout train formations after each run, before the finish is moved a kilometre up the road for the final three drills in order to include a twisting, uphill finish.

This practice is key to the team’s success this season, says Ackaert, who tells his riders to maintain a consistent speed of 60 km/h throughout the leadout, with each rider completing a little more than 250m on the front before eventually the sprinter takes over. The key is to maintain a smooth, consistent speed to ensure the train stays compact, and to not panic if a rival rider attacks off the front for an ambitious shot at solo glory.

Each drills is hard-fought, with both trains weaving across the tarmac, and the result at the finish line is accompanied either by cheers or light-hearted commiserations from team-mates. Judging by Andre Greipel’s success in 2012, Lotto-Belisol will be enjoying the former this season.

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The view from the team car

The 19 riders in Spain are split into two groups for the day. Group one, which includes Jurgen Van den Broeck, heads out for a five hours ride, including two-and-a-half hours on the time trial bike

Group two also sets off for a five hour ride – but with TT training swapped for leadout drills

The mood is relaxed as the riders bask in the early morning sunlight outside the team hotel in Benicassim

A short climb provides the opportunity for the nine riders to stretch the legs

The view from the team car

The pace intensifies as the group begins riding through and off

Slow down at roundabouts!

Six riders in the nine-man sprint group are riding a Ridley Helium – the Belgian bike brand´s climbing bike

The two sprinters in the group, Kenny Dehaes and Jens Debusschere, are riding the Ridley Noah FAST, which has integrated brakes at the front and rear to improve aerodynamics

And one rider opts for Ridley´s Classics bike, the Fenix

The team receives instructions ahead of the first leadout drill

The finish, on a slight uphill gradient, is marked by a bucket on this quiet road which runs alongside a motorway

The riders aim to keep the pace at 60km/h throughout the leadout

It´s neck-and-neck in the first sprint…

But there´s no doubting the winner in the second! Note the trail of riders behind who helped slingshot the sprinters into the finish

The finish moves up the road after three of six drills, making for a harder uphill sprint. Here the leadout men peel off leaving only two riders to attack the finish line

Time to refuel after six full-gas drills

The fuel for any hard ride: cake. After completing their leadout runs the team takes off for another one-and-a-half hours on the road before heading back to the hotel

But what followed over the next hour was an unexpected surprise.

Ian Austin, the Labour MP who co-chairs the all-party cycling group in parliament, labelled the primetime show as “stupid, sensationalist, simplistic and irresponsible”.

But what is sensationalist is some of the reporting which has followed a programme that was, in fact, fairly balanced and gave both sides an even crack of the whip.

What came out of the programme only confirmed what I already knew: all parties need to work harder. There are plenty of idiot drivers, and there are plenty of idiot cyclists.

Take the programme at face value, it’s primetime television. Is there a War on Britain’s Roads? No, but while the programme did highlight extreme examples, we, as cyclists, know that conflict between two wheels and four is common. I am regularly cut-up and passed by speeding cars with inches to spare and I see many cyclists riding with ludicrous disregard for their own safety - albeit riding on London’s heavily congested roads, which aren’t necessarily a fair reflection of much of the country.

But cyclists aren’t guilt-free, with some going out of there way to antagonise drivers by banging on cars, clapping sarcastically, pointing at a helmet cam and saying “smile for the camera”.

Is that going to defuse the situation and create the harmony that most crave? Instead, such a sanctimonious attitude only strengthens the ‘us and them’ divide between cyclists and drivers, even though most cyclists drive a car, and vice versa.

The most controversial aspect of the programme was the use of footage of an alleycat courier race from 2006. Filmed by Lucas Brunelle, the film was later sold commercially, thereby marking it out as professional footage alongside the user generated content which makes up the rest of the documentary, according to Carlton Reid of BikeBiz, but the fact remains that it was a real event which took place on real roads, and the BBC mark it out as the worst example of dangerous cycling.

It was the programme’s most poignant scenes which provided the inspiration of how to pursue a cause and try and create change with dignity.

Cynthia lost her 26-year-old daughter, Alex, when a left-turning lorry didn’t see her and crushed her. She bought £500 of shares in the cement mixing company, Cemex, whose vehicle killed her daughter, and made her case for improved safety to fellow shareholders at the firm’s AGM.

Today Cemex is the industry leader when it comes to HGVs and cycle safety, and their lorries are fitted with extra mirrors and sensors which detect cyclists within two metres of the lorry. The tragedy is that it took the death of a young woman to spark such change.

Cycling is not an intrinsically dangerous activity – but the dangers remain very real. The overarching problem is, of course, that it’s cyclists, not drivers, who are being killed or seriously injured when the two come together.

And while far more education, debate and government investment is required, the War on Britain’s Roads showed that cycle safety is on the public agenda.

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Last week I told you how Omega Pharma-QuickStep were, erm, jetting off to Slovakia for their annual pre-season team building training camp – now the obligatory photos have landed in the RoadCyclingUK inbox.

The Manx Missile

The team’s riders and backroom staff were divided into eight “mission teams” of six or seven members, who completed two days of “intense training” - obstacle courses, defence techniques, climbing, shooting, orienteering, and search and rescue.

OPQS aren’t the only WorldTour team to have ditched the bike at their pre-season camp, with pictures showing Lotto-Belisol’s Andre Greipel kite surfing and abseiling in the Dutch Zeeland, and Radioshack-Nissan-Trek’s Andy Schleck wood chopping in Luxembourg.

Team Sky, however, are two weeks into a three-month rolling training camp on the Mediterranean island of Majorca, where last winter the foundations were set for Bradley Wiggins’ Tour de France victory.

Search and rescue for Radioshack-Nissan-Trek (photo: Roland Miny – RNT)

Wiggins arrived at Team Sky’s pre-season media day in January having already completed two months of focussed training and told the assembled press how he was in the best shape of his life.

In his recently published book, My Time, Wiggins explains how that base training was an essential prelude to his remarkable season, when the old-world cycling rule book would have otherwise seem him roll along on cafe runs through winter and then try and race himself fit over the course of the season.

The British WorldTour team have shown in their three years in the sport that they’re not afraid to rip up the rule book. They were laughed out of town when riders started warming down after races – and now everyone is doing it.

And you can’t help that feel that, while an SAS-style survival camp makes for a good photo opportunity (flick through our gallery below), Wiggins and co are already getting the upper hand ahead of the 2013 season.

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The season is now longer than ever, starting in Australia in January and running until the Tour of Beijing in October, and, after only a couple of weeks off the bike, riders are heading back to work to prepare for another arduous season.

Omega Pharma-QuickStep spent a week with the Belgian special forces last year

November traditionally sees squads assemble for their first training camp but there’s little riding involved. Instead it’s a chance to complete pre-season admin, and a meet-and-greet between recently signed riders and existing team members.

Omega Pharma-QuickStep riders and staff, Mark Cavendish among them, will meet in Brussels before heading to the squad’s team building training camp at a military base in Slovakia. The camp is an annual event for OPQS and last year the team spent a week with the Belgian special forces.

Details of this year’s camp are “top secret”, say Omega Pharma-QuickStep, only revealing that the “special” activities and “unique scenarios” will call for “discipline, respect for the rules, adaptability and reciprocal help.”

OPQS coach Tom Steels, a former pro who won nine stages of the Tour de France before retiring in 2010, said: “Our guys and our staff will spend two days working on a series of activities that have nothing to do with bicycles but which will surely help us to form a cohesive group before the start of next season.

“It will allow us to understand some of the team dynamics, which could turn out to be important to better get to know some of the skills of our new members.”

The demands of life on the road as a professional cyclist mean this will be one of the few occassions the team will get together as one.

Omega Pharma-QuickStep were, along with Team Sky, the most successful team in 2012, with 51 wins, and while two days in Slovakia may be a far cry from the duties that will come before them over the forthcoming season, it could put in place the building blocks for another lucrative campaign.

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Motivation can be hard to come by in winter. In fact, November, when the temperature drops, the nights draw in and there’s only the prospect of a long, hard winter, is the nadir of the cycling season – but not on cold, crisp and clear mornings like Sunday.

The weather forecast was for perfect blue skies and temperatures in the low single figures but which, in this corner of the south east at least, hadn’t dipped low enough over night for there to be ice on the roads.

Instead, just a thin layer of ice formed on car windscreens, and a touch of frost spread itself across the fields which line the lanes of Kent and Surrey like a thin layer of sparkling icing sugar.

It was a morning to rise early, pull back the curtains and thank the cycling Gods. A chance to wrap up warm, pull the current best bike from the stable and head out for a Sunday saunter around the lanes. Perfect.

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Even the members of the Edenbridge Bonfire Society are putting the boot into Lance Armstrong

A 30-foot effigy of the disgraced American will be burned at an annual bonfire celebration in Edenbridge, Kent.

Each year members of the Edenbridge Bonfire Society choose a choose a public figure to burn as an effigy, with radical cleric Abu Hamza and Chancellor George Osborne also considered.

But it is Armstrong, dubbed a “serial cheat” by the United States Anti-Doping Agency, who will be torched on Saturday. Other public figures to have been chosen as the celebrity guy in previous years include Cherie Blair, Katie Price, Gordon Brown and Russell Brand.

 ”Lance Armstrong is certainly the biggest villain in sport, with fans across the globe feeling cheated by a man who was thought to be whiter than white,” said Edenbridge Bonfire Society spokesman Mark Young.

Meanwhile, the writers of South Park move quickly. This Friday’s episode of the satirical cartoon will take aim at Armstrong – less than two weeks of he was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles.

“Rocked by the recent news of drug use by a beloved icon, the world is left feeling lost and betrayed,” reads the episode’s blurb. “The boys, join with the rest of the nation, and remove their yellow wristbands. Everyone is on board, except for Stan, who just can’t seem to cut off his bracelet.”

The episode will be broadcast in the UK on Comedy Central at 10pm on Friday. Here’s a preview.

Now it’s time for the outtakes.

This latest video includes a few of the scenes that didn’t make the final cut, as well as some of Ashton’s scrapes along the way. The most stunning revelation? The original video required just one Pinarello Dogma 2 frame and one set of wheels –  and Ashton suffered just one puncture.

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It’s about hopping from the road to singletrack, from river paths to bridleways. It’s pure unadulterated fun; the type of cycling that leaves you grinning from ear to ear.

The change in the season sees many road riders swap slick tyres for knobbly tyres. For some it’s a chance to extend the racing season through winter, for others it offers a change of scenery through the cold, dark months ahead, when motivation otherwise wanes.

My urban ‘cross ride – the first of the year – takes me out from central London to Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park. Having inflated my tyres to 50 psi in the morning, little speed is lost on the ride out, while, with a long, sharp hiss of air, I deflate the tyres to 35 psi once off-road to make the most of the traction offered by knobbly tread.

Tarmac is swapped for fast gravel tracks, tight, twisting singletrack and boggy woodland. Instead of dodging traffic I’m sliding through the large pools of mud which have formed as a result of the recent wet weather, skidding over wet roots and pointing the handlebars down short but steep descents which, while perhaps not hugely demanding on a mountain bike, provide a good test of technical ability on a ‘crosser.

My choice of steed is the Trek Cronus CX Pro which has recently arrived at RoadCyclingUK for review. Early impressions are of a sure-footed machine which takes this short test in its stride, while the fat downtube and BB90 bottom bracket provide a solid platform to put the power down.

The real test will come in the weeks ahead, culminating in an appearance at the final round of the Rapha Super Cross series at Alexandra Palace – my first ‘cross race.

And with that in mind, I find a quiet section of gravel track to practice dismounting the bike; a manoeuvre which is such an essential part of cyclo-cross racing in order to clear the planks, stairs and other unrideable sections which litter ‘cross race tracks.

But it doesn’t last long. Riding ‘cross is just too much fun and I’m soon back in the saddle, swooping through the trees and wiping mud from my race before, reluctantly, it’s time to head home.

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Rapha Super Cross

Lance Armstrong’s reign came at a time when doping was rife in the peloton

And that controlled approach extends to the British-based team’s PR message – but the revelations against Lance Armstrong have seen that message skid off track.

“He is still a legend of the sport,” Team Sky rider Alex Dowsett told the BBC. “A guy who had cancer came back and won the Tour de France. I think it’s not really important and I really don’t think it matters.”

Doping is an emotive issue and Dowsett would have grown up as a young rider with Armstrong as an idol – a legend – at a time when drugs were rife in the sport and there were, as it turns out, few true heroes. In fact, USADA’s report goes as far to say that 20 of the 21 podium finishers during Armstrong’s reign have now been directly linked to doping.

And Essex-born Dowsett also has reason to be thankful for Armstrong’s continued involvement in the sport having ridden for the Trek-Livestrong development team before signing for Team Sky in 2011.

But it matters. Armstrong built his reputation as a clean rider – a cancer survivor and seven-time Tour de France winner – but has now been exposed as a vindictive bully who lied to millions of loyal fans, who have, like Armstrong, consistently batted away allegations surrounding the former US Postal rider, all while he made millions of dollars in the process.

Armstrong may cut an isolated figure after the revelations but he isn’t without support in the peloton. Dowsett’s fellow Brit, Steve Cummings, has highlighted Armstrong’s charity work, while 2008 Olympic road race champion Samuel Sanchez has pointed to the fact that the 41-year-old has never failed a doping control.

But USADA’s revelations against Armstrong are thorough, conclusive and utterly damning.

“All I know is that we all are racing clean. So, it was a different sport back then,” added Dowsett, who is currently riding the Tour of Beijing.

A different sport, maybe, given the prevalence of doping in Armstrong’s era, but it matters that, even now, the truth about what USADA are calling the “most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen” is laid bare.

Doping remains and it’s somewhat ironic that, on the same day that USADA published its evidence, Ag2r La Mondiale rider Steve Houanard was provisionally suspended and removed from the Tour of Beijing after failing an out-of-competition test for EPO on September 21.

The sport is in a better place, though, thanks to pioneers like Dave Brailsford and young riders who like Dowsett who herald a new age for cycling  - and to solely vilify Armstrong from what was a dark era for cycling is wrong.

But as the ringleader – the conductor of the orchestra – it matters that Armstrong has been exposed.

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UPDATE: Alex Dowsett later clarified his comments on BBC Radio 5 Live: ”When I first referred to Lance as a legend a couple of months ago it was referring mainly to what he has done for cancer.

“The Livestrong charity is something I rode for when I was with the Trek Livestrong team and I saw all the good that it did.

“It has really raised the profile of cancer awareness and raised huge amounts of funds. I rode for his development team and I did meet him a few times but I don’t think I’d want to [shake his hand].

“It’s what [the revelations] could do in terms of tarnishing the sport. It could put us all out of not just our jobs but doing what we love.”