Tour de France Tip of the Day: Chasing Hurricanes

It is possible to get to watch the start – or up to 30km’s away – of a stage and then make your way to the finish. This can be accomplished if a few basic steps are followed:

1. It must be a flat or transitional stage
2. The stage should at least 180km’s long, or more than 4 hours
3. Park you camper van or car off the route in a slipway before the stage begins, for a quick getaway
4. Pre-plan you route to the finish – giving a wide berth to the official parcours

This is as exciting as it gets. It feels like hurricane chasing, or like you are on “The Amazing Race.”

Nothing will go as planned. Traffic circles, road works and over-zealous Gendarmes will try flummoxing your every move through French countryside and villages. But determination will get you to the finish.

Quick pit-stops for food and libations will get the heart racing. Prepare yourself for explosive arguments between the driver and navigator. These rankles will be forgotten when you dart to the finish line and see Thor and Tom battle for Tour glory.

Be warned – this is only to be undertaken if you have had a medical and cleared by your doctor.

Tour de France Tip of the Day: Small towns show off more

If the stage ends in a small town that’s easily accessible – then make sure you go.

Following the Tour is about choices. Choices are cut down because of Gendarmes sealing access roads and the parcours being closed. These choices are made easier in the non-mountain stages because the town will generally have many routes to the town centre.

Small towns also show off more. All work comes to a halt – and a fête and street carnival are the result.

There are beer tents, bric-a-brac stores, French fries, souvenir shops, bands playing and everything you would expect at a festival.

The village puts on its best face. Make sure you get there to enjoy it.

Tour de France Tip of the Day: Buy L’Equipe Newspaper

My French is limited to words like maillot jaune, etape, grand départ, dopage and grimpeur. With this limited vocabulary it is surprising that I can travel around France, even with incessant pointing, gesticulating and playing charades (is that a French word?).

In fact, this is the beauty of travelling. Being outside one’s comfort zone and extending your boundaries. And this is why I recommend that you buy the L’Equipe newspaper - for an adventure.

There are loads of pictures, the results section is perfectly legible and some of the graphics and charts are mind-boggling and totally unique. I have kept loads of these newspapers as Tour paraphernalia.

In 60 years time I hope my grand-son (or grand-daughter) dusts my Tour trinkets box open – and reveals my L’Equipe treasure trove, much like the character in “Amelie of Montemartre” does in the telephone booth.

Tour de France Tip of the Day: Stay close to a Village

Wilderness and mountain views are some of the delights to behold in a French July. It is often a toss up to choose between heading to the top of a climb to watch the tour procession, or to make a stand elsewhere.

At least on one occasion you should be at a summit finish, or on a preliminary climb. Time, however, will not be on your side because you will only leave late that evening to go on to the next stage (if you have a car or camper van). A better suggestion is to get positioned near the bottom of the final climb in the village.

In a village, like Le Grand Bornand you have access to many activities and refreshments. There are often ski-lifts, bakeries, delicatessens, ice-cream, L'Equipe, tourist offices, bars, TV’s, shade, festivals, cool drinks, picnic spots, swimming pools, hiking paths – you name it.

A few hours before the cyclist approach then pack your daypack and walk 5-8 km’s up the climb for a good workout, especially if this exercise is additional to a morning ride.

If you are in a remote mountain top finish, you only have what you are carrying and potentially you may not even have access to a big screen or TV to watch the days approach.

Tour de France Tip of the Day: Go to the time trial start

Whenever there is a time trial – make sure you go to the start.

A lot of people distribute themselves along the route, or wait at the finish. However, by far the best place to be is at the start. It is here that you will be able to go to all the team buses and watch all the cyclists warming up. They are so close that you can easily get autographs and pictures.

The day is full of equipment and cyclist spotting. Keep a look out for bike customisations, such as paint-jobs and new disc wheels.

VIP's also abound at the start. It is easy to catch up with all their friends and ex-colleagues. At the Cognac start in the 2007 tour Lance Armstrong was seen in the Disco team car supporting Alberto Contador. Pat McQuaid is also often seen visiting the ProTour teams.

Being in a city or village allows a tourist to get a good cup of coffee or walk around the centre as the day unfolds. When the maillot jaune goes down the start ramp then you can dash to the brasserie and watch the excitement on a TV screen.

Tour de France Tip of the Day: Pack Ear Plugs

The French have a lot of culture. Their food from Provence to Brittany is heavenly, the wine is fit for Bacchus and the countryside invites picnics at every turn.

What some Frenchmen do lack though is the ability to allow a person to have a free-ride, or if someone is enjoying a situation above their station - then they will try to jeopardize that situation.

There should be a word for this phenomenon. It could well be the venomous opposite of serendipity (stumbling upon something wonderful by accident) – let me call it venomdipity.

Take the movie “Jean de Florette”. The gist of the movie is Gérard Depardieu inherits a rocky farm that apparently has no nearby spring – or water. He toils and struggles, until he almost dies from fatigue as he carries water from over a faraway mountain by the bucketful.

Short of death, and a beaten man, he discovers that the local villagers have always known that there is a spring a hundred yard from his crops. The bastards didn’t tell him. Venomdipity is what it is!

Imagine sleeping in the camper van after a hard drive over the Col du Galibier to the next mountain stage – a bottle of grungy Cahors red emptied, looking forward to the next Contador attack the following day – when at 12:45 am a car starts honking from a long way off and then hoots right outside our camper door.

This carries on intermittently as locals drive passed the camper vans and tents. Then the early morning locals – maybe they work at la boulangerie in the village – why else would the idiots be driving at 3:30 am and hooting all the way down the mountainside. This is venomdipity at its worst.

I can only think that they despise us as gypsy-like tourists.

So be warned – pack ear plugs.