Just for something new and different (sorry, can’t help a bit of sarcasm here) we spent day 11 in the car. We needed to get from Montpellier to La Mure, a tiny town which we had chosen to stay in due to its close proximity to Col du Galibier, the finishing point of the next Tour de France stage we intended to watch. Before we left Montpellier we entered our route into the GPS (known hereafter as Mandy), and at first glance Brendan uttered ‘oh no’ – the route Mandy had picked was the exact same route as the Tour de France riders were taking the same day, as they cycled stage 16 from Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux to Gap. We knew that taking this route would delay us by many hours so we decided to take the back roads, but as we were going to be so close to the Tour Brendan was keen to stop somewhere along the way to watch it. After my experience in Montpellier (a.k.a waiting for 8 hours to not actually see anything) I was not so keen, but we were on a Tour de France holiday so I didn’t have the heart to refuse; with reluctance from me and excitement from Brendan, Mandy led us to yet another Tour viewing location. As we arrived at our chosen spectating point we realized that this was going to be a different Tour de France experience to what we had seen so far: the road was practically deserted with no barriers, police or sponsor signage, and there were just a handful of locals sitting by the roadside waiting to see the cyclists go past. It was pouring with rain when we found a parking spot, but we took our little camping chairs, a picnic lunch and an umbrella with us and perched on the edge of the road:
happy with my baguette and no crowds!
we may have been overly excited at being able to cross the road!
Unlike the previous 3 times, we weren’t kept waiting for long! We had just missed le Caravane when we arrived, but there was a steady stream of official cars going past, as well as a few police on motorbikes making sure we weren’t standing on the road. After about an hour, when we had eaten our delicious meat and cheese baguettes, the helicopters that we had seen in the distance were suddenly upon us, signalling that the peleton was just over the rise we were perched upon.
helicopter following the peleton
Within seconds, there were at least 7 helicopters above us, and moments later the cyclists appeared over the rise:
the Schleck brothers with other Leopard Trek riders
The riders were so close that I had to step back at one point to avoid being taken out by handlebars! It was great being so close and seeing the riders just cruising along – they had recently passed a feed station so they were still eating gels, talking on their radios and preparing for the intermediate sprint which was only a few kilometres away. There were no crowds pushing and shoving to get a better view, and the riders could actually hear our individual shouts of support, which was really different to being in the huge finishing-line crowds! I was really glad that we had stopped to see the stage on a small country road, and we both got back in the car feeling pretty pleased with what we had seen.
typical scenery
For the next few hours we drove through some breathtaking scenery to get to the tiny town of La Mure and checked into our little hotel behind the La Mure Hotel de Ville (town hall). I have to say, it doesn’t look like much from the outside but the rooms are newly refurbished and the shower…oh, the shower! It’s divine! We wandered around La Mure in the relentless rain trying to find a restaurant (seriously, we could barely find one) and ended up having the worst meal of our entire trip at a pizzeria that we chose simply because it was warm and dry. Oh well…you win some, you lose some!
Wow! You truly lucked out finding that gem of a spot!