A Quartet of Ville Étapes

My simple question of where The Tour de France would finish in Cambrai was greeted with a rare level of enthusiasm from the fifty-year old woman behind the counter of the Tourist Office in Cambrai.  Though the vast majority of those staffing the many tourist offices throughout France are most cordial and helpful, not many go beyond simply being friendly.  This woman was full of exuberance and seemed thrilled that I was interested in The Tour and treated me like an intimate friend she hadn't seen in a while, wanting to know what I'd been up to and sharing things that would interest me.

"Its finishing just up the street in the big main plaza.  It's less than a month away and the anticipation is bubbling.  Every day there is a story in the paper about it. Yesterday the story was about the seventh section of pavé that is on the route on the way into Cambrai being named for a former racer who lives in the area.  Nearly 500 people came out for the ceremony.  Here let me show you."

It was a full page story with a photo of seventy-year old Robert Mintkewicz beside a plaque bearing his name.  He rode The Tour eight times in the '70s.

Seeing my avid interest in the article, she said, "We have a monument by a round-about not far from here honoring Jean Stablinski.  I'm sure you know who he is.  He lived in the area too.  Its too bad you weren't here last weekend.  We had a ride that was part of a Fête du Tour in all the Ville Étapes riding a portion of The Tour route."

I told her I had been in Mulhouse and participated in a bike ride there.  When she learned I had been biking around France the past month scouting out The Tour route and visiting various bicycling and historic shrines, she asked, "Do you know Louis Bleriot?  He's from here."  

I was sorry I had to tell her I didn't know him.

She charged from around the counter and said, "I'll show you who he is."  She led be to the front of the office and pointed up to his bust.   

"He was the first person to fly across the English Channel," she said.  "He did it in 1909, six years after the Wright Brothers first flight.  He won a thousand pound award from an English newspaper for doing it.  The same round-about that honors Stablinski also honors him. You really must go see them."

I assured her I would.  She was a whirlwind pulling out various brochures on things to see in the area from military sites to museums.  I asked if she had anything on Robespierre, as I was headed to Arras, where he was born.  She didn't, but she told me that Arras, like Cambrai has a network of subterranean passages and that I could go down stairs here for a sampling.  She was a wonder, someone who genuinely loved her job.  I didn't want to leave.  She was wearing a colorful sweater that matched her personality.  "I like your sweater," I said.

"You do?  I bought it in America."

"You'll have to wear it when The Tour comes to town.  I'll come by and I'll have a couple friends with me from Australia and Germany who would like it too."

"I'll be here," she said.  "It will be an exciting time."

It was a quick twenty-five miles to Arras, my legs fueled by her abundant energy, the start town for the next stage, a not too painful transfer.  Right at the starting point on a small hillside dotted with bikes painted the colors of The Tour leader jerseys, a digital sign on a Tour-decorated billboard had the number twenty-three on it, the number of days until The Tour will grace the town.

Before I set out on the route I paid a visit to the house where Robespierre lived until 1789, when he moved to Paris to serve as one of the ring leaders of the French Revolution, until he fell victim to the Reign of Terror and was sent to the guillotine.  His home on Rue Robespierre, a narrow one-way street, is now a museum and a tourist draw.

This fifth stage starting in Arras ends in Amiens, another large northern city, about the same size as Cambrai and Arras.  Riding the route I could feel the pavement humming in antipation.  I could feel the joy that would radiated by the thousands of fans lining the quiet countryside roads for hours, picnicking and hanging out with family and friends for hours.  This was the sensation I had been missing the last couple of weeks when I was making the huge jump from the Alps up to The Tour route in the north.  I followed the fifth stage route all the way to the finish in the center of Amiens across from the Cirque Jules Verne.

Two blocks away is the home of Jules Verne, now a museum with large paintings on a surrounding wall of some of his wild imaginings.

Equally distinctive is his grave in the huge Cimeterie Madeleine on the outskirts of the city.

The chief attraction of Amiens though is its World Heritage cathedral.  It would have made for a spectacular backdrop to the stage finish, but it was surrounded by narrow one-way streets too perilous for the peloton.  At least its start in Arras would pass a World Heritage site, a Belfry in the town center. 

I had another transfer of roughly twenty-five miles from Amiens to the start of the next stage in Abbeville, a lesser-sized city.  Tour fever was manifested here with painted cyclists in yellow and red polka dots on Its tourist office window.

There was another set on the glass doors of its city hall.

The round-about leading to the city offered more of a warning than a celebration of The Tour.

The route through the town included an artistic wheel arrangement.  I was hoping there might be a series of them, but it was the only one.  

No worries, as there will be plenty of bike art in the many miles ahead.

 

Fontaine-au-Pire, France

This year's Tour de France route may be less of a tour of the country than any previous route since that first one on 1903. Rather than making a loop around the country, as was the initial practice, this year's route is nine stages across the top of the country and then eleven stages across the bottom before finishing with a largely ceremonial stage from a suburb of Paris into the city.  There will be two transfers by plane of 500 miles from the north to the south and then 300 miles from Grenoble to Paris.

After scouting out some of the route through the Alps I've been in Tour withdrawal the past two weeks as I've put nine hundred miles on my legs biking along the eastern edge of France through the demanding up and down terrain of the Vosges and the Ardennes up to Cambrai, the finish for the fourth stage, the first stage finish in France after two in Holland and one in Belgium. There has been plenty to see, including the birthplace of Rimbaud in Charleville-Mezieres, but I haven't been able to preoccupy my mind on the upcoming Race, now less than three weeks away, as much as I'd like.

About ten miles before Cambrai I stopped off in Fontaine-au-Pire, the smallest town ever to host a Tour stage, hoping to find some plaque or monument celebrating the event.  There was none to be found, not on the welcoming sign to the town of 1,217 or on its Town Hall or small stadium or in its central plaza.  The town hall had two plaques relating to the Second World War, but nothing on The Tour's finish there in 1983.

It might have been because the town was suppressing the memory of the tragedy of that visit.  It was supposed to be a Ville Arrivée in 1982.  It was going to be the greatest event in the town's history.  Great expense and effort had gone into winning the honor of hosting The Tour.  Striking workers, though, blocked the stage before it could reach Fontaine-au-Pire and the town was denied the thrill of having Benard Hinault and all the other great cyclists of the time grace its streets and being telecast all over the world.  It was devastating.  The Tour made it up to the town the next year with a Team Time Trial finishing there, but it wasn't the same. 

I camped in a small field on the outskirts of the nondescript town of largely brick row houses.  I was woken by a pack of barking dogs out for a run with a man who sells dogs.  He warmly welcomed me, thinking I might be a pilgrim following the Santiago de Compestelllo route, as it passes nearby.  He was delighted to learn I was an American, but confessed to not much caring for The Tour de France.  He said The Tour coming to his town was a "catastrophe" and best forgotten.

I wondered if that would be the case as well as I approached Varennes-en-Argonne two days before.  It was there in 1891 that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were captured in the middle of the night fleeing the country.  I had asked in the tourist office in Verdun, thirty miles away, if there was a plaque commemorating the event and where it might be in case it happened on a road outside the town.  I was told there was a plaque in the town square.

Actually there was a series of plaques, written in French, Englsih and German,  throughout the town detailing all the events relating to the capture of the King and Queen.  They were promoted as the "Tour de Louis XVI."

They had made their escape from Paris at 2:30 in the morning in two carriages, the King and Queen in one and members of their retinue in the other.  They reached Varennes at 11:30 p.m. that night.   They had stopped several times for fresh horses. Varennes was their final relay point, just fifteen minutes from crossing the border of France at that time to safety.  At their last exchange someone suspected who they were.  He and a companion set out after them, not catching up to them until Varennes.  While the royals waited for new horses they rounded up anti-royalists to waylay them. The two became  national heroes.  People from all over the country sent them money and presents.  Friction arose as others who had assisted were envious of their acclaim and the spoils they reaped.  Varennes for a time was also celebrated for its role in detaining the King and Queen, but the town went into decline when those of wealth, who sided with the King and Queen, left the town.  A year-and-a-half after the capture Louis was sent to the guillotine on January 21, 1793.  Nine months later Marie-Antoinette suffered the same fate. 

Varennes remains a quiet small town.  More prominence was given to the battles of WWI that were fought in the vicinity.  Verdun is nearby, where the most prolonged and bloodiest fighting of the war took place.  There was a musuem and a large memorial to the American fighting forces with the Stars and Stripes flying high above it on General Pershing  Road, the main street through Varennes. 

A few miles north of Varennes, outside the smaller town of Romagne-sous-Montfaucon, is the largest American cemetery in Europe with 14,246 graves.  It is one of twenty-five American military cemeteries scattered around the world, all in Europte except ones in Tunusia, the Philippines, Mexico and Panama. 

It is one of six American cemeteries in France from WWI.  There are six others containing WWII casualties.  There were scattered small German cemeteries as well, not as well maintained and with dreary brown crosses.

As I bicycle across the northern tier of the country scouting out The Tour route there will be plenty more cemeteries to come, including the largest of the French with 40,000 dead, north of Arras, start of Stage Five.  The legs are coming around.  I'm far enough north now that it doesn't grow dark until after ten p.m. 

Mulhouse, France

When I last visited Yvon in Mulhouse eight years ago, we didn't have time for a side trip to the Peugeot Museum in Sochaux to see the bike Bernard Thevenet rode to victory in The Tour de France.   Every year since, Yvon has been asking, "When are you going to return to Mulhouse to see Thevenet's bike?"  We'd been to his birthplace in Le Guidon and had met up somewhere in France every year, usually somewhere along The Tour de France route, but it had never worked out to swing by Mulhouse over along the German border until this year.

I arrived in Mulhouse two days before Yvon, as he's been spending most of his time with his girlfriend on the other side of the country.  I chose to reach Mulhouse before Yvon, as I wanted to be in one of the larger cities in France on the first weekend in June when the entire country celebrates the bicycle with a Fête du Velo.  Mulhouse  would be a fine place to be, as it has a strong cycling community and an extensive network of bicycle paths and is on the Velo Euro route that goes from the Atlantic to Bulgaria.

The Mulhouse Fête du Velo activity was a ride around the city to various schools to encourage cycling to school as well as commuting in general.  More than a hundred cyclists gathered in the Place de la Reunion beside the town's central cathedral for the ride and not a one was wearing Lycra. The convivial crowd was accompanied by several police officers on bikes who corked intersections so we could remain in mass.  There were a good many children, most on bikes, but some also as cargo.

Before the ride set out I chatted with a guy who had been among those who campaigned to establish   the first bike path in Mulhouse thirty years ago.  There had been a commemorative ride a couple weeks ago. He was quite proud of the tremendous number of bike paths all over the city now.  It was comparable to a Dutch city with a bike way on nearly every street. 

He was one of several cyclists on Bromptons.  I rode along with one of them who said it was easier for he and his wife to put the fold-up bikes in their car rather than mounting a regular bike on a rack. His wife wasn't on the ride as she preferred to shop.  He had traveled extensively (Africa, Tibet, China, the US), but never by bike and was most interested in my experiences.  He was heartened to hear that Air France gladly accepts bikes and even provides boxes for them.  He was all set to book a flight.

The ride ended where we started after two hours of meandering all over the city. Cold water in five gallon jugs awaited us on a table under a tent.  And beside the jugs were bottles of mint syrup, my favorite additive, to please the taste buds, as is a national imperative.  

In the US, the water would have been laced with Gatorade or some other synthetic electrolyte that may or may not have been gastronomically sensible.  The French do-it-yourself menthe a l'eau was another shining example of their way of making life a little more liveable.  I was happy to toast one of my Bromptom companions with a "Vive la France."

It wasn't the only occasion that my palate would be pleased in Mulhouse.  Besides the fine cheeses and fruits and vegetables and olives that accompanied the meals Yvon prepared, our lone meal out was a uniquely French experience.  It was lunch at a cafeteria for city employees, current and former.  As a retired postal worker Yvon was entitled to partake of the bargain four euro meal and could bring a guest.  We had our choice of three entrees (steak, duck or omelet) including a heap of French fries and chopped green beans along with a variety of salads, deserts, cheeses and fruits.  Wine and beer were among the beverages.  It was a veritable feast. All larger cities offer such a service and Yvon could drop in on any.  

I was hoping Yvon would tag along with me after I left Mulhouse so I could take advantage of more of this fine dining but he had other matters to tend to.  We still had a fine two days biking and museuming.  Yvon is a volunteer greeter for the tourist office, so was well versed on all the city had to off.  Its automobile museum with the official title of "Cité de l'Automobile--National Museum--the Schumpf Collection" has the largest collection of automobiles in the world.  A sprawling, nicely reconditioned former factory contains 520 cars, mostly from the collection of Fritz Schlumpf, who made his fortune in textiles.  He had secretly amassed his collection and had it hidden away in this factory.  It didn't become known until his workers went on strike and took over the building.  The workers held the collection hostage for two years while they were on strike.  To raise money they began charging admission for people to see the cars.  The French government eventually bought the collection to pay off the debts of Schlumpf and his brother and made it an official museum in 1982.

The collection was Eurocentric with not a car from America nor even a mention of Henry Ford.  There was a heavy emphasis on the early French cars of Bugatti and De Dion-Bouton.  The only reference to America was a photo of an astronaut on the moon as a reference point for 1969.  There were scattered videos and a large screening room with racing footage from Monaco dating to the 1930s and also the Paris-Dakar race.  The museum is popular enough to be open every day of the year except New Year's Day.  Behind the museum motorists could race their own car on a small figure-eight course.  

There were a few Peugeots in the collection, but they were a mere sampling compared to the several hundred on display at the Peugeot Museum forty miles away in Sochaux.  Mulhouse also has a Peugeot factory, the city's largest employer with 12,000 workers, about the same number who work in Sochaux, where the Peugeot brothers started their business in 1810 originally manufacturing saw blades.  They were clever and innovative and manufactured almost anything steel-related that had a sizeable market--hammers and knifes and bands for corsets and coffee grinders and washing machines and radios.  They were among the first to manufacture bicycles in 1882 and then automobiles nine years later, which came to dominate their production line.  The museum likewise was dominated by the automobile.  It was as overwhelming as the musuem in Mulhouse. Its collection included 450 cars, though only 130 could be on display at a time.  In contrast to the Mulhouse museum, it had a heavy emphasis on accessories, and non-automotive products.  Only one small alcove, though, was devoted to the bicycle.

Sandwiched among the fifty or so bikes were two that were raced to victory in The Tour de France.  The 1967 bike of Roger Pingeon and the 1977 bike of Bernard Thevenet.  Missing was Thevenet's 1975 bike--the PX-10, an exact copy that I bought in 1976 with tubular rims for $250 and then rode coast-to-coast across the US the following year, though on clincher rims.

This museum was as French as the automobile museum in Mulhouse.  There was no mention of Eddie Merckx riding for the Peugeot team early in his career or Tommy Simpson either, winning the World Championship on a Peugeot.  America received a mention though in the list of Peugeot automobile wins.  The first came in 1894 in a race from Paris to Rouen and the latest up Pikes Peak in Colorado in 2013.  The gift shop had nothing bicycle-related, just books and models devoted to the car along with t-shirts and other garments with the Peugeot logo 

If these two automobile museums hadn't sated me, I could have spent a couple more days taking advantage of the many other museums of Mulhouse devoted to trains, electricity, wall paper, printed fabrics, history and fine arts.  One of the nicest features of the city was  free WIFI in the downtown district, something that ought to be available everywhere in every city and probably will be sometime in the future.  Yvon's branch library didn't offer WIFI.  Fortunately it was just a couple miles into the city center on a bike path paralleling one of the several tram lines in the city.  A tram ticket was little more than a euro and was quite popular.  One could hear the hum of the tram from Yvon's 16th floor apartment that he has had for thirty years.  As always, it was a great pleasure to be under the comforting wing of Yvon.  We are looking forward to connecting once again during The Tour after the peloton leaves the Pyrenees and heads to the Alps.  

Le Corbusier, Hugo and Pottier

It may be a place of worship, but one still must pay a fee of eight euros if one wishes to lay eyes upon the Le Corbusier chapel on a hill high above the village of Ronchamp on the fringe of the Vosges Mountains in eastern France.  A fence and trees block the view of this celebrated shrine, considered one of the major architectural achievements of the 20th century by one it is premier architects. 

Though Le Corbusier's promince is largely due to his work in the urban sphere, this wildly original,  ultra-modern chapel, that is a dramatic departure from his principles of standardization, ranks among his most distinguished designs and is as much of an architectural attraction as the many notable works of Frank Lloyd Wright scattered across the US.   Signs began appearing for it from miles away up to the final turn across the street from Ronchamp's cathedral and tourist office.

The better than ten per cent grade up the slightly less than mile climb to the marvel was more of a strain than anything I had encountered in the Alps.  The road fed into a large parking lot and continued no further.  I had been anticipating a quiet picnic beside the chapel while I charged my iPad.  Instead I was greeted by a high fence and a visitor center and rules about what one could do on the premises.  At least there was a WC and I could fill my water bottles.

The grounds beyond the fence included a grass-roofed dormitory for pilgrims that originally served as the quarters for the construction crew, a rustic house for the priest, accommodations for the sisters of the chapel, a peace pyramid, a bell tower and the chapel. I thought there might be a barn and silo on the grounds as well, as that was my first impression of the chapel as I climbed the path towards it.

As I circled around it, each view offered a different impression.  There was no discernible front or back.  It might have been a deformed igloo or a military fortress or the laboratory of a mad scientist.  Its isolation and dead quiet made for a perfect retreat.

One side had a cluster of narrow slots that let light in, but could have been used by archers, if the glass were knocked out, to ward off attackers.

The interior was a large cavern with three small alcoves each hosting an open bible on a table illuminated by a candle.  All the light came from candles and the sun.  There was not an electrical socket to be seen in keeping with the original chapel dating to the forth century that stood on this spot that was destroyed in WWII.  Le Corbusier's version was completed in 1955, ten years before his death.  There are concerts and events all summer commemorating its sixtieth anniversary.

Ronchamp hadn't been on my itinerary.  It just happened to be on my way to Ballon d'Alsace, the so-called first climb in the history of The Tour de France in its third editon in 1905.  That wasn't entirely true, at it was only slightly higher and longer than the climb over the Col du Republique in the first two races up from St. Etienne that I passed on my way to Cannes, but Henri Desgrange wished to hype that third Tour with its first foray in a mountain range (the Vosges), wondering if the racers were capable of the eight-mile, 2,000 foot climb up and over the 3,700 foot summit of the range.  It may have been a feat 110 years ago on the one-speed clunkers of the day on an unpaved road, but on this day there was a steady stream of cyclists giving it a ride.  I was the only one with baggage though.  The five and six per cent grade was much easier to handle than the brutally steep climb to Le Corbusier's chapel.

A plaque at the summit commemorates the first rider over the pass, René Pottier, not only that year but the next as well.  He won The Tour in 1906.  In 1907 he became the first of several Tour winners to commit suicide, distraught over the infidelity of his wife.

Another bonus attraction on my way to this plaque was stumblimg upon the birth place of Victor Hugo. It was in Besançon in 1802.  The house he was born in is now a museum.  It is just two blocks from one of the first libraries founded after the Revolution, built nine years after his birth.

I must have had a premonition that Hugo was on my route, as just a couple days before I had downloaded his memoirs from the invaluable Project Gutenberg website.  The book doesn't mention anything of his youth or his hometown or his family or even his writing.  It was published in 1899, fourteen years after his death, and is a collection of remembrances mostly about his time as a legislator during the Rebellion of 1848 when another King was ousted. He was a famous figure by then, and recounts conversations with the King and many of the principals of the time.  He later went into exile but returned to France in 1870.  He was a much beloved figure who campaigned for the poor and universal suffrage and against the death penalty.  His funeral procession from the Arc de Triomph to the Pantéon, where he was buried, attracted over two million people.  Nearly every town in the country has a street or place or library named for him.

What awaits me down the road, as I head further north to connect with The Tour de France route, I know not, other than that there will be more notable sites and that the pedaling will be take me through scenery that never disappoints and pleasing small towns that all have a genuine allure.

Lyon--City of Cinema and Cycles

One of the valuable lessons I've learned in my years of bicycling around France is to not to pay attention to road closed signs.  Just because a road is blocked to motorists, doesn't mean someone on a bicycle can't get through whatever is causing the detour, whether it be road construction or a landslide or a carnival or some other local event.  It might be hairy, such as the cliffside Craig and Andrew and I had to negotiate two years ago, but it is always satisfying to defy those detour signs and save myself many, many miles of extra riding and also have the road all to myself sometimes for an hour or more.

There is always the danger that the detour could be legitimate, such as with a bridge being out, and that I will have to double back the distance I have ridden, which can be several miles, but such occurrences are such a rarity I'm never hesitant about continuing on past the "go away" signs.  I almost welcome them for the miles and miles of solitary riding they promise. 

I was a little bit nervous, though, a couple days ago when a sign at the summit of the 6,749 foot Col du Lautaret warned that the road was closed 25 kilometers away.  I wouldn't want to double back the fifteen miles from the closing point, as it would be a Category One climb. But my options weren't much better--either to continue climbing from the summit of the Col du Lautaret for five miles over the Galibier or to descend seventeen miles back to Briançon and make a wide circuit to Gap and then to Grenoble.  

The Galibier does have its allure.  It was Henri Desgrange's favorite climb, and there is a monument to him a kilometer below the summit.  But I've climbed it several times already, and didn't care to subject myself to it again, especially after doing the Col de Vars the day before, another Beyond Category climb.  My legs were ready for some respite after six days in the Alps, two more than The Tour de France will inflict upon the peloton this year.  The Col du Lautaret was to be my final big climb until the Pyrenees in a month-a-half.  Along with the views the highlight of the long climb from Briançon was a ski gondola in the middle of a roundabout promoting the skiing in the area, winning the award for the most distinctive roundabout so far of these travels.

There were no roundabouts on the descent even though I passed though a couple of small towns along the way.  At each of the towns more signs warned the road was closed ahead.  An occasional car passed me but none flashed their lights or frantically waved or nor did anyone shout at me to turn back as I passed through the towns, giving me some hope that I wasn't on an ill-fated mission.  If I had to climb back, at least it would prolong my time in this spectacular scenery and also put some more quality miles on my legs.   After ten miles the road flattened a bit, but continued to descend along a rushing torrent of a stream.  

A couple miles further I came upon a narrow, dam-created lake.  Just before it a dirt road descended to the lake.  It looked like it might be a detour, but I continued on the paved road, high above the lake.  After a mile I came to a blockade I could easily get around.  There were road construction vehicles along the road, but it being a Saturday, no one was working.  If it was just this bit of construction that was the cause of the road closure, I could start celebrating.  

Around a bend I came upon two guys walking my way.  They waved their arms to make me halt, just what I didn't want.  They said I wouldn't be able to get through, as a tunnel had been sealed up and there was no getting through or around it.  With a sunken heart, I asked if the dirt road down below might get me around the lake, though I could see that it had disappeared below the sheer cliffs down to the water's edge. "No, no," they said, but that road I had seen led to a small ferry that would take me and my bike across the lake.  That was too good to be true, but it was, as we could see the pontoon ferry that very moment approaching the landing, not even docking, just barely coming up to the sandy shore.  I didn't care that I'd have to wait for its return, however long that might be, I was just thrilled to have my daring rewarded once again.

After the twelve-person shuttle of a ferry, which I shared with just one other, I continued descending to Bourg d'Osians at the base of L'Alpe d'Huez. I was a week early for a gathering of 20,000 Dutch cyclists who come there every year the first week of June, most of them making the climb six times as the word six in Ditch is similar to the word Huez. I camped a little ways beyond the small town and then continue on to Grenoble, thirty milers away, just as I will do when The Tour de France rolls around.  I needed to scout out the train station in Grenoble, as for the first time I plan to take the train to Paris rather than biking the three hundred miles.  It will be an early morning train so I can arrive in Paris in time to see the peloton on the Champs Élysées. Though I knew the location of the train station, I've learned its best to confirm the route ahead of time so there will be no surprises, especially when I'll be pressed for time.

Another of those lessons France has taught me is not to feel too crushed when a road I'm riding suddenly presents me with a no bicycles allowed sign. Though it is certainly disheartening, I know that it may be only for a short stretch and that I'll be able to return to the road after taking a secondary road or bike path paralleling it or sometimes a bit more of an alternate route.  Twice that happened to me on D1006 on my seventy mile hop from Grenoble to Lyon.  I'd never entered Lyon from the east before and didn't see a better route than D1006.  An autoroute (super highway) ran near it, so I presumed D1006 would be bike friendly.  It mostly was, but I did suffer the frustration of having to pull out my map several times to figure out what was going on when I was inflicted with that dreaded French sign of a bicycle with a red circle around it (red circle rather than slash). When I returned to D1006 for another try after my second eviction it was clear sailing the final twelve miles into Lyon.  

Just before the sprawl of France's second largest city with two million inhabitants began, I passed its airport, named for Saint-Exupery, the famous pilot and writer. As I frequently see at French airports, someone had parked their car to watch the take-offs and landings.  When the urban congestion began, the highway assumed a name--Avenue Franklin Roosevelt.  A couple miles before the city center I came upon a huge monument celebrating the Lumiere brothers, the inventors of cinema.  It was appropriate that right in front of it was a row of rental bikes, as Lyon was at the forefront of the urban bike rental programs that have swept the world.  Paris was inspired by Lyon, which inspired all the rest.

This plaza was right beside the neighborhood where the Lumieres lived and worked.  A small side street leading into the plaza was called "Rue de Premier Film," as it was on that street the Lumieres shot the first film ever on March 19, 1895.  It was fifty seconds long and showed the workers streaming out of the Lumiere factory, some of them on bicycles. A plaque marks the exact spot where the camera stood.

And just across the street beyond the actual walls that all those workers passed through, the factory has been converted into a movie theater.  For the month of June it will pay tribute to Orson Welles.  

It was an unexpected thrill to stand at this seminal spot, as thrilling as standing where the inaugural Tour de France set out from on the outskirts of Paris in 1903 or standing where Lincoln stood when he delivered the Gettysburg Address.  The images of that first film are so deeply embedded in my movie consciousness I felt transported back to the actual filming and good vividly perceive those fifty seconds  even without closing my eyes. One of my most memorable experiences at the Telluride Film Festival was in 1995, the centennial of that first film, when Bertrand Tavernier and Thierry Fremaux gave a presentation of the films of the Lumieres.  Among the films they showed, including that first one, was the first film ever with a narrative--a cyclist being pummeled by snow balls and then having his bicycle stolen.  One of the images on the walls of the institute taken from the films of the Lumieres was of an acrobatic bicyclist.

But it wasn't the Lumieres, though it could have been, that brought me to Lyon, but rather to pay homage to Paul de Vive (Velocio), the father of my greatest passion--cycle touring. Back before 1900 he was the first advocate of venturing off into the countryside on one's bicycle, and made it his life's work.  He is buried in the huge Loyasse Cemetery high on a ridge overlooking the city.  The road up is so steep, one can take a funicular.  Luckily the cemetery is such an attraction it has an office and maps in English and French listing the significant graves.  Velocio was among the forty-nine listed.  It would have been impossible to find him otherwise among the thousands of graves.  Even with directions it wasn't so easy to locate him, as he was buried in a family plot of a name other than Vive and his name was near the bottom of those listed on the tomb.  

It was the two plaques on the tomb devoted to him that caught my attention.  It was almost as much of a thrill to prop my loaded bike up against the fenced-in grave of this great as it had been earlier in the day to gain a personal relation to the first film ever shot.  But this was my third pilgrimage to a Velocio site.  I'd been to his birthplace on a previous trip and just a few weeks ago climbed a road named for him to his bust at the summit of the Col du Republique outside St. Etienne, where he had spent most of his life.

My visit to Lyon lacked just one thing--a tribute to the first stage of the first Tour de France in 1903 that concluded in Lyon.  The best I could do was to linger in the huge Place Bellecour where the racers set out from on the race's second stage.  In the middle of the plaza is a statue of Henri XIV on a horse and overlooking it the high ridge with a huge basilica and the Loyasse Cemetery and a communications tower that is a replica of the Eiffel Tower, erected in 1893, ten years after the original.

The narrow streets of the old part of the city are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Among the labyrinth of streets is the Gadagne Msuem with a collection of over two thousand puppets, the only one of its kind in France.  But it was Monday and its many museums were closed, so I was denied it along with the Lumiere Museum and a museum devoted to the confluence of the two rivers that converge in Lyon, the Rhone and the Saône, right there at their merging point south of the city center.  Also closed were all the libraries, the way of the French, catering to the workers rather than the public..  

Into the Alps

After two weeks devoted to cinema I can now turn my attention to getting my legs ready for following The Tour de France, just five weeks and a day from now.  There could be no better way than plunging into the Alps, just out the back door of Cannes.  It was ninety miles, much of it climbing, to Digne-les-Baines, Ville Départ for stage 17 on July 22, the first of four stages in the Alps culminating on L'Alpe d'Huez before the final stage of The Race finishing on the Champs Elysees. 

Though it is nearly two months until this historic town of 17,000 will be on center stage of the cycling world, it had already set up markers on its prime street, lined by plane trees, indicating the spot where the peloton will start the stage that will take it over five passes before finishing with a final four mile climb to the ski resort of Pra Loupe up from the ski town of Barcelonnette.

Before I set out for Pra Loup I had a feast of sculptures by the British landscape artist Andy Goldsworthy.  There are nearly twenty of them scattered in the vicinity, including a serpentine figure of clay on a wall in the Gassendi Musuem in Digne.  Several of them are installed in ancient stone buildings in the surrounding countryside and are part of a ten-year project referred to as "Refuge d'Art."  The only one of those that was within my range was two miles out of town past the thermal spring spa that earned Digne its name.  It was a fifteen minute hike from the road to the cairn that Goldsworthy had constructed in an abandoned stone structure not much bigger than a shed.

A couple miles out of town in the opposite direction were five more cairns, all comprised of flat stones in contrast to these rounded ones.  They resided in a large outdoor park called the Musée Promenade with an admission fee that included the work of a dozen other sculptors who specialize in using natural material for their work.  Walking trails through the woods on a high embankment linked all their work.  Goldsworthy's had their own "Cairn Path."

 One would walk for a few minutes and then another would pop up, each mysterious and regal, a cross between a Mayan ruin and an object left by visitors from outer space.

The final one stood in a clearing high above the others in a position of prominence looking down upon Digne and out over the spectacular mountain-framed valley.

Behind it was the ancient three-story Rampart Mansion that now housed a museum celebrating the geographical uniqueness of the region.  Twenty million years ago it was under the sea.  The surrounding mountains and valleys abound with all manner of fossils--mollusks and dinosaurs and even a creature resembling a mermaid.  The park is part of a world-wide network of Geoparks, a concept that was launched in 2000, and has been sanctified by UNESCO.  There are 111 of them.  France has five.  There are two in Canada, but none in the US.

Ten miles further up the road climbing through a narrow gorge with a boulder-strewn fast-rushing stream stands another Goldsworthy.  It is known as the "Sentinelle de la Vallée du Bés."  It resides in a small recess along the narrow road facing the stream, standing at attention as if on sentinel duty.  This was his first in the region, created in 1999.

There was hardly room along the road for Goldsworthy to work, carefully piecing together his mosaic.  I could imagine his presence and could envision the process of his craftsmanship as portrayed in the magnificent documentary on his work, "Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time" from 2001, one of my all time favorite documentaries.

I had a particular interest in these cairns, as Janina and I have been gathering rocks on nightly raids from a former golf course near her home that had recently been bullldozed preparing the area for a housing project of mini-mansions.  Lots have all been staked out and roads laid through the property, but fortunately construction has begun on just two of the many lots, so there are still rocks a plenty to harvest for a cairn of our own.  One of our piles in Janina's front yard has already begun to resemble a cairn.

The Tour route doesn't include any of Goldsworthy's works, but I was happy to include those I did on mine.  I wasn't able to visit all of them, as they are scattered far and wide, but I will be sure to make the others a part of my routes to and from Canne in the future, especially the "Sentinelle de la Vallée du Vançon" that stands out in the open on a sharp bend in the road off in another valley.

I camped just a few miles beyond the Sentinelle in the recess after I had climbed out of the gorge and found a meadow that was like a mini-amphitheater with mountains, some still snow-capped, all round. When the sun peaked over a ridge in the morning and shown on my tent, the temperature inside rocketed from the 40s to nearly 60.  I still had some more climbing to do, helping to keep me warm in the early morning chill. Then it was down and then up over another pass, then down, then up, finally reaching the ski resort of Pra Loup and the finish of the stage at the end of the day.  Banners announcing The Tour were hung on light poles as I neared the summit.

Fans of the French rider Bernard Thevenet, who won The Tour forty years ago, had erected a monument to him complete with a bike bearing the number (51) he wore during the race.  Just as Greg LeMond "Slayed the Badger" (Bernard Hinault) in 1986, Thevenet much more shockingly slayed the Cannibal (Eddie Merckx) eleven years before.  Thevenet is one of The Tour announcers for television, so this is a site for his eyes.

It is these gestures reflecting the deep passion the French have for The Tour that make riding the route such a meaningful and uplifting experience.  Whether a mere decorated bike hung from a post or an ornate art project, they all gladden the heart.

Cannes Day Twelve--The Awards

The Coen brothers and their seven fellow jurors surprised the prognosticators and awarded Jacque Audiard the Palm d'Or for "Dheepan,"  a choice I was most comfortable with, especially after finally seeing the prime contenders for the award, "Carol" and "Son of Saul," earlier in the day.  They were both fine films, but didn't fit the profile of a Palm d'Or as cutting edge cinema that would stand the test of time.  

"Dheepan" may not quite measure up either, as such was the cinema this year, but Audiard is an auteur who has been in the on deck circle for a Palm d'Or for several years, especially since his "A Prophet" was denied it by the Isabelle Huppert jury in favor of Michael Haneke's "White Ribbon" in 2009. Joel of the Coens recognized the award went to a director more than a film, as when he announced the winner,  he didn't say "Dheepan," but rather "Jacques Audiard."  Audiard's two Sri Lanka co-stars joined him on stage.

It concluded a nice evening for France, as the two acting awards went to the French as well.  Vincent Lindon won the best actor award for his role as an unemployed factory worker in "The Measure of a Man."  He was the only award winner to go over to the jury box and personally thank each juror with kisses and hugs while all the while the delighted audience continued their applause. The shared best actress award went to Emmanuelle Bercot as an overwhelmed wife in "Mon Roi."  The other recipient was American Rooney Mara as the lover of Cate Blanchett in "Carol."  The division of this award was almost as surprising as the Palm d'Or, not only that it wasn't shared with Blanchett, but even more that it was the award given to "Carol," rather than one of the bigger awards.  But those will come in the future.  Todd Haynes was all smiles in accepting the award, as his movie will be strewn with Oscar nominations.  It could easily win  the Best Picture Oscar, but is too conventional of a movie to be worthy of the Palm d'Or.

The Hungarian Aushwitz film "Son of Saul" by first time director Laszlo Nemes was awarded the Grand Prix for the second best film.  It had been touted for the Palm d'Or, but it wasn't  as fully accomplished of a film such as "Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days," the Romanina film by a young director that was a consensus Palm d'Or in 2007.  If Nemes fulfills his promise, there is a Palm d'Or in his future.

The best director award went to Hou Hsiao-Hsien, a good choice, for "The Assassin." Michel Franco won the best screenplay for "Chronic." His star Tim Roth was sitting beside him in the audience.  Some thought he might win the best actor award.  He is the fourth Mexican to win an award in the last few years. The Jury Prize, for the third best film, went to Greek Yorgos Lanthimos for "Lobster," full of strangeness right up the Coens' alley.

And once again Paolo Sorrentino was overlooked by a Cannes jury.  I saw his "Youth" for the second time earlier in the day and appreciated its richness and depth and pizzazz even more.  So did my audience in the packed Debussy. ("Carol" and "Son of Saul" were the other two movies replayed in the largest of the theaters on repeat Sunday, indicating Thierry Fremaux thought they were the movies with most appeal.)  It responded to it with much more laugher and enthusiasm than the audience of press I had seen it with five days ago.  I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been awarded the Palm d'Or, just as "Great Beauty" could have been, but was totally ignored by the Spielberg jury.

It was one of three Italian films in Competition, none of which received an award.  An Italian journalist in the press conference after the awards ceremony asked how that could be.  Ethan Coen said, "We had enthusiasm for more movies than we were able to recognize."  As it was, eight of the nineteen films were given an award.

Chaz Ebert asked the best question of the press conference even though it was long-winded and paid homage to her husband.  She wanted to know if this jury experience would make them better at their craft as actors and directors.  Xavier Dolan was the first to respond.  He said he was going to begin shooting a movie in twenty-four hours.  He didn't expect this experience to effect him as a film-maker, but acknowledged he'd never had such a great time continually discussing cinema.  He felt it had changed him as a human being and then added he thought it had made him a better person.  Joel Coen quickly piped in, "You're not," but then grew serious and said that it been an amazing experience for him as well and would "profoundly effect" him in the future as an audience member.

The first questions were why the jury gave the Palm d'Or to "Dheepan."  Ethan knew it hadn't been favored by the critics and said, "We are a jury of artists, not critics.  We found the film beautiful."  That was an unexpected description.  "Important," or "significant," or  "powerful," would be more obvious choices.  Jake Gyllenhaal liked the plot contrivance of three strangers becoming a family.  Dolan had nothing to say on the topic, but despite being the youngest on the jury by far at twenty-six, he spoke more at the press conference than anyone but the Coens.  He will no doubt be a jury president in the years to come and could well be accepting the Palm d'Or next year for the movie he will begin shooting tomorrow, "Its Only the End of the World" starring Marion Cotillard and Vincent Cassell.  I am already looking forward to it.  And I'm also looking forward to processing the seventy plus films I've just seen as I head to the Alps and begin conditioning my legs for The Tour de France commencing on July  4.