Stage Twelve

It was a day of Great Seconds—the second time in five days I had the pleasure of a community viewing of the stage, and on the battlefield it was the second win for Cofidis and the second win for a Spaniard, emphatically breaking the droughts Cofidis and Spain have been suffering at The Tour.  

There was celebration all round on Stage Two when a Cofidis rider won a stage for the first time in fifteen years and great relief two days ago when a Spanish rider won a stage for the first time in five years, maybe the longest for the country that has produced many great riders and winners of The Tour from Bahamontes to Indurain and Contador.

So today when the Spanish rider Ion Izagirre riding for the French Cofidis team won the stage after riding away from his breakaway group nineteen miles from the finish there was more great jubilation by all connected with Cofidis.  The crowd of a hundred or so I was watching it with all applauded, expressing their French allegiance.

I had the opportunity to stop and watch some of the action on another screen set up for community viewing, but the screen under a small tent with several rows of benches was packed and standing far back in the sun wasn’t something I cared to do.  Just a few miles further in Chénelette, twenty miles before the stage finish in Belleville-en-Beaujolais, I came upon a bigger screen in a large square with seats fanned out around it with plenty of trees providing shade.  The seats were filled but I could sit down in front of a tree and soak it all in.  

It was the hometown of Henry Anglade, who had three top five finishes in The Tour, including second in 1959 behind Bahamontes.  There was a photo of him mounted beside the road and a banner across it bearing his name.

Hopefully I’ll have another community to share the experience with on Stage Thirteen on Bastille Day.  Towns all along the route ought to be making a festive occasion of it.  It’s too cold at Super Bowl time for such events back home.  Super Bowl parties are mostly at homes and bars, not town halls or parks, where mass bonding can occur as happens at the Tour de France and the World Cup too.

I didn’t get to see the peloton in the flesh today.  I arrived in Roanne two hours before they set out and just after the caravan was on its way.  I couldn’t follow the route out of Roanne as it was already off-limits, so I took a route parallel to it through the high country.  The route would make a big “S” through the region for 105 miles.  My more direct route was about half that.  I could have arrived at the finish about the same time they did if there hadn’t been so much climbing.  As it was I was a little more than an hour behind them.

It was just eleven miles to the start of the next stage in the smaller town of Châtillon-sur-Chalaronne.  I shared the road with a steady stream of RVs following The Tour, but not too many official vehicles as most of the staff and press and teams seemed to be staying in the much larger Belleville.  

I went over one hundred miles for the first time in these travels maximizing my time on the bike all day trying to arrive in Roanne in time for the caravan and then trying to arrive in Belleville before the peloton, just falling short on both counts.  I camped a dozen miles into the next stage just past a large bird park that had been a stage start one year, just as Vulcania was this year.  There are similar themed parks (medieval, a recreation of pre-historic caves, Euro-Disney and others) scattered around the country that are happy to pay the hefty fee to be a Ville Départ for the massive, world-wide publicity it brings them.

I was glad not to be camping in a bivvy sac as the night produced a heavy dew and cool air descending from the nearby Alps dropped the temperature to fifty.  I needed my windbreaker in the morning for the first time.