Le Blog :: Le Tour is Coming!

I’m sure you’ve noticed how some of the road surfaces used on the route of the Tour de France appear to have been paved or striped literally moments before the peloton passes through. This, in fact, happens to be the case. While Washington’s politicians think they have the market on pork cornered, they’ve got nothing on the Tour. It may well be the world’s biggest annual public works project.

France, as a whole, isn’t gripped in the thrall of Tour fever for the entire month of July, but if you happen to be anywhere along the actual route, you’ll understand how mammoth an undertaking this race really is. When I mentioned in an earlier post that the Rue de Paris in Vichy was being race-prepped, I thought they were crazy to have waited until a week before the race to do the work.

By French time, though, they were way ahead of the curve. The town of Oraison, which was on the course for the stage to Digne-les-Bains, was feverishly striping a section of roadway less than 24 hours before the Tour was scheduled to roll through. It would literally be a question of whether the paint would be dry when the race approached.

This section of road, by the way, was one of those photogenic stretches where old, old trees form a tunnel of shade for a kilometer or so. Beautiful to look at, but scary as hell to drive, or ride, through. Those tree trunks are massive and they actually cut into the last inch of asphalt. There is no margin for error; if a truck is coming the other way and you have to make a quick move, you are going to have a face-to-face meeting with a tree that is not going to budge one iota. Bad enough to drive, in a raging peloton it’s got to be very intimidating.

While the villages may hold their race prep until the very last minute, the routes themselves are detailed well in advance with large signs (yellow, of course) advising road closure times for each specific spot. This is very helpful if you’re planning to drive a certain spot to watch the Tour come through, not as helpful if you intend to go to a stage finish, as we found on the way to Digne.

After a pleasant morning cruising the village of Valensole, we started heading to Digne along the Tour route. It was very cool seeing the locals carve out any available bit of shade as they set up their picnics to await the race, still some five hours away. But, of course, you have to be there for the passing of the Caravan Publicitaire, which is more than half the fun.

We made it all the way past the fifteen kilometer mark as the crowds thickened and the level of excitement ratcheted up. It looked like we were good to go until we got to a roundabout at about 12.5 kilometers to go. Traffic coming from our right was massive and the gendarmes made it clear that there was no left turn toward Digne available. We had to make a u-turn in front of the roundabout and head right back where we came from. If we weren’t scheduled  to meet friends in Digne, we might have packed it in right there.

Instead, we went a few kilometers the other way, chose a random right turn and started freelancing our way through the countryside with no map, no idea where we were headed. When we finally saw Digne signs, we feared that we would be headed right back to the closed route, but luck was with us. There were two more heavily gendarmed roundabouts to be negotiated, but then we saw city limits signs and people parking...wherever.

I made one aborted effort to park, which happened to be a driveway, and then turned up a gravel road. This just happened to be the parking lot for the Digne Gare (train station) and there were lots of spots still open. Score!

Since there were still three hours left until the arrival, we parked ourselves at the gare’s cafe and enjoyed a couple of cold beverages to kill the time. We still didn’t know how far away the finish line was and we forgot abut the Caravan Publicitaire entirely. Not to worry. When we finally decided to make our move, we walked about a half mile, crossed a beautiful bridge and found ourselves right at the one kilometer kite.

That was sweet, but things got better when we found a bit of shade at about 500-meter mark and the Caravan made it’s way right past us moments later. What happens is that the various sponsors all have elaborate vehicles that cruise the course and throw out mostly worthless promotional items to the crowd...which quickly turns into a rugby scrum. Men, women and children scramble like dogs after a bone for key chains, cheap hats, thunder sticks, product samples and other junk. My normally placid wife told me she was going to deck this guy if he hit her one more time; I moved several places down the line to avoid the impending fracas.

Anyhow, after the fight, there was a race. We wedged ourselves against the barricades at the 200 meter mark, the thunder sticks started banging and the peloton blew by at about a thousand miles an hour. Somebody won and we all went home. It couldn’t have been more fun.

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