Late the week before last a change was made to our schedule at work. The activity planned for this week is now happening later in the month; to my mind this creates a vacuum in the schedule... and what do vacuums in work schedules get filled with in July? The answer you are looking for is Trips to le Tour de France.
Once again I’m travelling as a lone adventurer on my bicycle, but this differs from previous tour de France epics in a few important ways. Firstly this plan was thrown together very last minute (I actually started proper planning a week ahead of departure). Secondly on this occasion I started with a time I was available and picked which stages I could watch based on that (instead of picking the stages I most wanted to see and working out a trip around that). Finally this trip will be to see stages which are ‘plain’ and ‘medium mountain’ stages, as opposed to the ‘high mountain’ stages I’ve favoured previously.
On my first Tour de France trip I rode from Paris to Leon via Switzerland and the Tour’s High mountain stages in the Alps. Last year I started in northern Spain, then rode across France from its coast on the bay of Biscay to its Mediterranean coast at Montpellier via the Pyrenees (including, of course, the col du Tormalet). This year my schedule allows me to watch stages 3 and 4 which are in the Pas-de-Calais and Normandy, two areas altogether untouched in my previous tours. They are also conveniently close to ferry terminals. Alas though, the biggest climb of the route is a poultry Cat 3, so I’m not expecting the same level of challenge as previous years.
Another difference is that this time I’ve gone for a relatively light load-out, having concluded that just three days in France aren’t worth the overhead of carrying cooking gear etc, so its cafes and snack bars all the way for me; vive le cuisine François!
This is the inaugural cycling adventure for my current mascot duck (his previous adventure having been backpack-full and bicycle-less).
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