Tour de France - It's SO not about the bike ...

Today was our final full day in Limeuil, but we had always planned to spend it catching up with the Tour de France. Stage 18 conveniently passed only 70-odd km from the Dordogne region. Bruce has spent many happy hours on Google Earth researching the route and finding the best place to see the action; the spot he chose was on the D19 as it curved around the Lac du Causse, 15 km from the finish line in Brive-la-Gaillarde.

  As we know, life is all about the journey. The destination, especially when I'm navigating, can be a pleasant bonus. But our leased car - a Peugeot 308 - has an inbuilt GPS system. Translation: There's a woman in the car who constantly tells the driver what to do...and it's not me!

Limeuil is in the middle of the countryside. The Tour de France also tends to gobble up the countryside. So the best way to get from Countryside Point A to Countryside Point B was to listen to The Lady.

Curiously, she must have been aware of the nature of today's excursion. The route she chose was more or less as the crow would have flown (if it were interested in the Tour de France, of course). But The Lady chose to send us along some rather interesting 'roads'. Black tarmac and white dotted lines soon disappeared and we found ourselves trundling along cyclepath-width lanes, with the occasional detour onto what looked more like footpaths. Once the road name goes to three numbers (as in the D 184E), expect to give way to pedestrians...

All credit to The Lady, though; she took us precisely where we needed to go. We found ourselves an excellent viewing spot by early afternoon. 

When in France...read Albert Camus!

And it wasn't long before the circus arrived. Not the riders, just the pre-show entertainment: an endless convey of decorated trucks, cars and floats promoting  sponsors' products - interspersed with gendarmes on fast motorbikes. Kids, young and old, scrambled to catch the freebies tossed from moving vehicles. There was plenty to keep us entertained for the three hours or so until the announcement "cinq kilometers!"

Jeremy Roy, a French rider, led the blur of colours past our corner. His leading group of three was closely followed by two other riders.... and the peleton - the main bunch - would have been only 30 seconds behind them. After over 200 km of racing, they were tightly bunched. 

The stage had an exciting finish: with only 300 or so metres  to go, Mark Cavendish sprinted from nowhere to cross the line - his second stage win of this Tour. 


We were oblivious to this excitement of course; back in the car, The Lady had found us some different cycle paths for the return journey to Limeuil.