Tour de France

The Tour de France

My love affair with watching cycling started in 2015 quite unexpectedly. It was images of French countryside, chateaus and panning shots of immense war memorials which gripped me at first. As I started to watch the racing unfold, the TV commentary pulled me in still further; I was learning about the multiple minor prizes which are awarded every day, I was learning the meaning of the words 'peloton', 'breakaway', 'domstique' and the way that riders overcome the laws of physics to out compete their rivals. By the time the day's racing came to the finish line, my heart rate was up, I was at the edge of my seat, willing the breakaway rider to stay away and take the stage. In short, I was hooked!
When Frans and I decided to move to London, I immediately imagined the possibility of watching the Tour de France in person, being one of the millions of fans on the roadside waving flags, wearing polka dot caps and cheering the riders on with shouts of allez, allez, allez! (go, go, go!)
Once I started investigating the prospect of visiting France specifically to watch the race, I realised that it wasn't going to be quite as easy as I had initially thought. Unlike a pitch-based sports match where you know the location of the game and can easily plan accordingly, the Tour de France takes place over 3500 kilometres of general roads over 21 racing days. It is possible to know the route of the following year's stage about 10 months before the race occurs, but when I started to investigate a little further, I realised that it is actually just the start and finish town for each stage that is published, the route its self is still a mystery until much closer to the Grand Depart (first day of racing). I read multiple blogs and websites dedicated to advice for watching the race in person and began to develop a picture of how the experience would be. This would be an important part of managing my expectations for the trip. Some important lessons that I didn't have to learn the hard way:
1. You will spend a long, long time waiting on the roadside to see the riders flash past in all but a few seconds
2. You cannot see more than one spot on any one day
3. Roads are closed hours before the race starts, sometimes even the day before. And there is no centralised way of finding out the details of these road closures!
Now that I had all this good advice, I needed a travelling buddy. Enter Philippa, the perfect person to travel to deepest France with, stand on roadsides with, drive multiple car journeys with and watch a few precious moments of cycling with! We decided that stage 16, 17 and 18 would be the best to watch as they were close to Grenoble where we had an accommodation contact. Flights booked, car hire sorted, South African flag packed and we were on our way!
Fay and Alan Barrow were our exceptional hosts for the 4 nights. It is not really possible to describe how perfect our stay there was, but I will try. Fay collected us at the airport and had to recognise us from a whatsapp photo as she had never met us and only knew my mom from when they were 12 years old. Alan is a trained chef and we had hotel-level meals every evening on the patio overlooking the mountains while the sun set, enjoying conversation with two of their daughters who were home at the time. Their home is large, beautiful and comfortable with a spectacular kitchen and the cutest dog, Honey. Every morning we woke up to gentle breeze coming through the window off the nearby mountains and the chiming of the bells from the Saint Martin d'Uriage church.

The spectacular Barrow home with sun soaked patio in the foreground.

We rented a car while we were there and that came with its own challenges of driving on the right-hand side of the road, but even more difficult was driving on the left-hand side of the car, with the gear stick and the rear-view mirror on the wrong side! But I got used to it surprisingly quickly and soon began to enjoy driving again. We dealt with a few super narrow, twisty and scary mountain roads and also some lovely wide freeways (where the speed limit was 130 kilometres per hour, what a novelty! Not that we could actually go very fast in our tiny and tinny little rental car!)
Over the three days we saw the finish of one stage, a climb on the second day and the start of the stage on the third day. Seeing the finish of stage 16 in Romans-sur-Isere was exciting; we were in the middle of the crowd and couldn't really see the riders coming over the line, but we did see the presentation of the prizes, as well as some of the team busses afterwards.

The highlight of stage 16 was seeing Marcel Kittel slowly riding back to his bus sans helmet so we could get a really good picture of him. 

Spectating on the mountain climb gave us the opportunity to experience the riders passing us at a slower pace and fairly strung out in smaller groups. It was quite a drive to get to Col de la Croix de Fer and we had to park a few kilometres away from the race route due to high volumes of traffic. From there we walked up the race route until we found a spot to set up on the roadside to set our selves up for the hours long wait in alternate blasting wind and sprinkling rain. It was a bizarre spectacle to see this really remote mountain road lined with people calmly waiting with their flags and picnics. From where we were sitting I could see hiking paths on the mountainside opposite us and I imagined some unsuspecting hiker coming over the hill on their otherwise lonely and secluded hike to see this spectacle. About an hour and a half before the riders comes The Caravan. This is a convoy of marketing floats with music blaring and people on board throwing freebies into the crowds. It is a total of about 70 or 80 vehicles and you get a variety of fun stuff; we got our coveted polka dot caps, souchon sausages, madeleine cakes, many many key rings, rubber bracelets, cone shaped shout enhancers, blow up cushions, I could go on!

One of the floats of the Caravan with music blaring and freebies flying

About an hour after the caravan came the riders led by the so-called 'Sky train', a line of riders from Team Sky who ride in the front of the race to control exactly how it unfolds as they had the yellow-jersey rider Chris Froome in their team so they have the unwritten right to ride at the front.

The Sky train - Photo credit to Philippa, a truely awesome shot!

The third day of spectating for us involved a long drive to Briançon for the start of the stage to Col d'Izoard. The route from Grenoble to Brainçon was absolutely spectacular and I would recommend driving it to anyone who is visiting that part of the country. Brainçon is a wonderful little town in the High Alpes with a medieval quarter with a steep cobbled street where we had lunch after watching the riders pass. The day out was thoroughly worth it even though we only got to see a small part of the race. On our way home, after fighting with a petrol dispenser, we stopped multiple times to take photos of the incredible view which included snow-capped mountains, in the middle of summer!

Medieval Briançon

Snow capped Haute Alpes

And so my Tour de France experience came to an end, here are some more pictures.

Tourist at the top! Col du Glandon is where we parked and Col de la Croix de Fer is the climb we watched.

Proudly South African. The sweet French family next to us lent us there umbrella pole as a makeshift flag pole. They didn't speak any English but asking someone to take a picture of you waving a flag is fairly easy using sign language. 

WE GOT THE POLKA DOT HATS! 

The finish podium at the end of stage 16 in Romans-Sur-Isere.

On our first day we stopped in the little town of Pont-en-Royans and had a picnic next to the beautiful river which runs through the town. Our SA flag served as a table cloth.

Honey! 

This was all Fay had to recognise us! She found us though, thankfully!