'The cobbles, by the way, are excellent in London' - how crowds at Herne Hill cheered home Wout van Aert to victory at Paris-Roubaix

It grew from a rumble, a low chorus of a group in suspense. Wout van Aert was on Pogačar’s wheel in the Roubaix velodrome and people weren’t daring to hope - yet. Another few turns of the pedals and Van Aert was pushing ahead of Pogačar. The crowd roared.

But this chorus of joy wasn't playing out in Northern France, or in a small bar in Flanders. I’d just walked into Herne Hill Velodrome’s club room in South London with three precious minutes of race time left, and the atmosphere was electric.

Riders in multicoloured jerseys and cycling caps crossed with team names cluttered the room, all eyes trained on the small TV in front of them. The coffee machine whirred somewhere just behind the action, as time trial taster sessions rolled around the velodrome outside. Emily Stainer was, for the first time all afternoon, released from coffee-making duty as the crowd locked into the most exciting racing of the year so far.

"Everyone was on [van Aert's] side - it was super, super intense in the room,” Stainer recalled, proof of the Belgian's enduring popularity. “And then he suddenly went for it.”

“It was all drama, wasn't it?” CJ said, sat just across the room from where Stainer stood watching. “Van der Poel trying to drag himself back after his two punctures on the Arenberg. There were punctures and mechanicals everywhere, people falling off here, there and everywhere.”

CJ was recovering from a cobble ride they had - along with the rest of the captivated room - finished earlier that day. The Cobblemonster ride had started out on Sunday morning from UpCYCLE in Brixton, and headed north-west, ‘blasting across some early secteurs of the smoke’s Victorian pave before tucking into the east end and its myriad lanes of snaking cobbled nadgery,’ before ending back in Herne Hill for a victory lap of the velodrome in true Roubaix-style.' All according to the website.

“The cobbles, by the way, are excellent in London,” CJ said. To demonstrate their point, they compared them to the giant cobbles in Belgium: “The first set of cobbles that I saw, I burst out laughing. They are so big that you just bounce all over the place. It's uncontrollable. You have to go as fast as you can, so that you don't hit every single cobble. So when the pro riders are doing it, they hit like one cobble in 20, because they're so fast. But because I'm not very fast, I’m bouncing all over the place.” Luckily for CJ and the Cobblemonster riders, “the London cobbles are much more manageable. They're fairly small.”

The best cobbles CJ has ridden in the capital so far criss-cross the city. There’s a stretch in Farringdon and a load around the Docklands, as well as “a really long section down Wapping High Street.” The Cobblemonster tries its best to capture as many of the city’s cobbles as possible, with each edition offering a fresh treasure trove of hidden routes.

The ride finished at Herne Hill Velodrome, in time to catch the men’s Paris-Roubaix race - but not before the group did their own velodrome-finish. Unbeknownst to CJ, their final straight was about to imitate Van Aert’s own victory-lap, as their friend hung to their wheel only to overtake with metres left to sprint.

What is it about Paris-Roubaix that makes it such a special race, I asked Stainer, herself new to the world of professional racing. “Me and my friend were watching the Tour of Flanders the other week, and we were just like, well, this is going to be really boring, because it was basically decided who's going to win with an hour to go,” she said. “It felt like we couldn’t get excited about it.” Roubaix, on the other hand has a roster of underdog-victors, from Mathew Hayman to Johan Vansummeren.

Herne Hill Velodrome is a particularly special place to watch Paris-Roubaix. It is, after all, the home of VC Londres, Fred Wright’s first club. Though he finished 132nd this year, hopes had been high after finishing 9th last year. The 454 metre velodrome was where he first competed, in the track league alongside his dad as a kid, and where fans and family still come out to cheer him on, whether he’s riding on the track outside or beamed into the telly.

Maybe it was the collective post-ride high that gave the room such a buzz on Sunday, maybe it was the objective thrill of Paris-Roubaix, its unique capacity to produce race-long drama, maybe it was the fact that everyone was experiencing the race together - everyone in that room locked into the same drama. It was, if nothing more, a reminder of the importance of third spaces, where people can come together to celebrate and to share.

The only improvement to the day would have been more women in the crowd, a feeling CJ shared too, stressing the accessibility of an event like the Cobblemonster - no matter how alarming its name. "You always find that there's more blokes going to these things," they said. "[Other riders] might look at the distance and think, Oh, that's a long way. But it's such a chilled, relaxed ride."

But back in Herne Hill, Van Aert had won and I'd entered the pavilion just in time to witness the wall of sound that seemed to shift him across the line. Then as quick as the silence turned into screaming, chairs were scraped away, the telly switched off (before the women’s race could be streamed) and all trace of the day's event cleared to make way for the children’s birthday party about to head through the double doors.