Tour de France

After family visits in Paris, Mamers and Vendee, we headed for the island of Noirmoutier for the start of the tour de France (TDF).

The tour was planned to start at the entrance to the island near the bridge and then to pass through the south area and across the Passage de Gois.  Like several other semi-attached islands in this area (think Mont Saint Michel as the most famous) it is possible to cross from the mainland on a land bridge for one and a half hours each side of the low tide on the otherwise submerged Passage de Gois.  Luckily, we arrived at the entrance to the island just in time to cross.  After finding our hotel and hiring some bikes, we rode the 16km out to the Passage de Gois (and back uphill into the wind), to review the options for Tour de France spectators.  This is what we saw.

Our view of the Passage de Gois

The next morning, keen to get the best position in order to catch the action we left the hotel at 7am to ride with the locals on the free bus to the Passage de Gois.  We arrived at the chosen spot and perched ourselves on the rocks right at the edge of the water.  This is how it looked about an hour after we arrived.

Stories of a previous TDF which raced across the Passage had us excited about the spectacle, and as the tide receded we could see why.

In 1999, half the peloton lost six minutes when one rider slipped on the wet road and there was action aplenty with bikes and riders stuck in the mud or piled on each other. You can see the result here:

Passage de Gois 1999 Video

We were just in front of the spot where the road narrowed.  Combine that with a rough stone surface, fresh mud and wet road, and anything could happen. 

The first thing that happened was that the caravan commenced.  The caravan is the name given to the vehicles which precede the TDF with sponsors logos, beautiful young men and women throwing things to the crowd, music blasting, and plenty of talk over the PA systems to excite the crowd.  Here is an example of one of the caravan members.

The next thing that happened was the caravan continued – for a total of three hours.  Given that it was travelling at around 20 km per hour, it could cover 50 to 60 km in the time it took to pass.  Then there was a lull, followed by team cars for about 5 minutes.  Another lull, then some excitement as we could see the helicopter which was tracking the peloton was over the approach road.  Then we saw the lead car and bikes.

For the next 35 seconds, we were treated to a peloton in tight formation travelling slowly and carefully onto the Passage de Gois.  Then they were gone.

Over three hours of advertising caravan, followed by 35 seconds of event.  Draw your own conclusions as to whether is was worth the early start, time and expense to get there, the wait in the sun sitting on a rock with French people climbing over us to try to get a better vantage point, the run back to the bus stop to catch it before it left at 1pm and the 30km ride the day before to find the best spot. Once is good, twice would be hard to justify.  If you want to see the TDF, watch it on TV.  If you want to feel the experience, by all means visit. Once.

UPDATE

In replacing a broken link to the 1999 video, I came across a video of the 2011 event.  You can see the motor homes, some of the "caravan" and from 11m 02 s into the video until 11m 28 s you can see the full peloton pass, very carefully and seven seconds faster than I thought!

What I can’t understand is the number of people who arrived in self-drive motor homes, camped for two days along the route, watched the TDF flash by in 35 seconds and then moved on to catch a vantage point to do the same the next day.  I must have missed something.

Our next encounter with the TDF was on the way back to Le Mans on Monday. Dominique navigating without a map on the departmental roads brought us to  St-Philbert-de-Grand-Lieu on the road to Cholet.  It was here we met the TDF for a second time. We arrived at 11am to be told the road we were trying to access was closed until 3pm for TDF to pass (another 35 seconds). After some gentle discussion with the gendarme and the swapping of some stories about Australia, Dominique won the day and the gendarme instructed us to follow him. Along the route and through the barrier and on our way.