Stage Eight

 

For the first time this year I thought I was going to ride a stage in its entirety, but as I closed in on Limoges, the Stage Eight Ville Arrivée, I realized I could shave eight miles and two Category Four climbs from the route and save myself well over an hour.  With time crucial in getting into Limoges before noon and on my way to Stage Nine, I did not hesitate in heading directly to Limoges on N21, rather than taking the meandering route the peloton would take on secondary roads.  I hated to forsake the growing fervor of the fans already lining the route and all the finishing touches with the 25 and 20 and 10 kilometer to go arches being mounted, but time is always of the essence when trying to keep up with The Tour.

I had ridden N21 two weeks ago on my way to Spain and knew it was perfectly amenable to cycling and its grades would be much gentler than those on the alternate route, enabling be to conserve energy for the hills to come on Stage Nine.  I also knew from my scouting of Limoges where the stage ended and the whereabouts of the tourist office, so I could ride in stress free.  I just had to find the Orange telecommunications outlet to finally get the SIM card in my iPad activated,  after having been thwarted a couple times earlier elsewhere.

The Orange shop was just a couple blocks from the tourist office and the stage finish.  The attendant couldn’t get my two-year old card to respond, delaying me nearly half an hour.  Thankfully the new card immediately connected so I no longer have to worry about being near Wi-Fi to get a stage result if I can’t  find a bar to watch the action.  I could well be stuck in no-marks land tomorrow as Pogaçar and Vingegaard duke it out on the Puy de Dome, so I will be able to live it blow by blow.

My preview of the Ville Départ in Saint-Leonard-de-Nobart thirteen miles away also paid off, as I knew precisely where the stage would start and where I would find the yellow course markers, and also that there was a water spigot behind the tourist office, which was my first destination on this hot day.  Poulidor’s hometown had mounted a couple of new tributes to the national hero in the past two weeks.  One was a large mural on the side of fhe tourist office and another was a portrait capturing his genial charm.

There were more tributes to Pou Pou along and on the road.  

Part of the route included a few miles of a fifteen-mile circuit named for him around a lake. 

 I could have added to the Poulidor theme by going by his grave in the local cemetery, but I didn’t care to spare any time in getting down the road.  I knew I couldn’t reach the climb to the Puy de Dome the next day before the route was closed, but I wanted to get as close as I could and if nothing else be in a town with a bar when I was told couldn’t keep riding.

I put my new SIM to use at five pm when I was still three miles from a resort town on a lake that might have a bar.  The terrain had been brutally hilly with climbs of a mile or two one after another.  Mads Pedersen, a former world champion, became the second Dane after Vingegaard to win a stage, breaking Philipson’s sprint streak, as this one had a bit of a climb more suited to Petersen.  Philipson still finished second, racking up more points in the Green Jersey competition, almost making a mockery of it.

If it hadn’t taken so long to get a SIM card to work back in Limoges I would have made it to the resort town in time for the finish and seen it on television and saved myself a few mega bites.  As it is, I can parcel out seventy-five a day for the twenty days I have remaining in France.  Wi-Fi has been so plentiful this year, with supermarkets offering it unlike previous years saving me from having to find a tourist office, i should have no concerns of exhausting it.  I’ve managed just fine without that luxury for my first eighteen days here. 

A four mile climb after the resort town had me sweating buckets.  I shed my soaked shirt after a mile and continued barechested for the first time in these travels.  Many of the men sitting outside their campers along the road had shed their shirts too or at least had them fully unbuttoned.  There were enticing campgrounds along several lakes on the route, but I was happy to end up beside a bale of hay and have a vast field all to myself.