Another day, another hill

Tour de France 2025

Sunday 20 July: Stage 15 Muret - Carcassonne
By car: 224 km
By bike: 7 km

Tat: Lidl T-shirt and bucket hat, can of Tourtel (I’m getting good at those 😁), Haribo, Cofidis buff, FO keyring décapsuleur 

The days are starting to blur now. There’s an unthinking routine, and fortunately those hours of planning in the winter are paying off. Get up, get ready, get to today’s stage, get to the evening accommodation.

We’ve dropped out of the Pyrenees and we’re back on the rolling plains east of Toulouse. My beautiful accommodation last night, full of old-world charm and hospitality, is just 20 km away from Thursday’s Intermediate Sprint at Labastide-Beauvoir. I drove through there again to get here, but Thursday seems an eternity away. I’m in a strange warping of time. Lille seems like another time, yet simultaneously, by this time next week I will be in Paris, and the whole thing will be over, and it feels like things are flashing by far too quickly. 

My host last night again thought I was from the Low Countries, partly because I cut up my words, but also because the vast majority of British who stay with her can’t speak French, and therefore there’s an expectation that someone who can converse, albeit in bad French, can’t possibly be English. That’s quite an indictment. 

I’ve got another 200+ km journey after the stage today. The Tour passes straight through the local town, and I’m hoping to get down there early, cross to the south of today’s route, and save a chunk of time by taking a direct route on the autoroute. Whether I can do this rests solely in the hands of the gendarmes policing the route. Some, like Orcines near Clermont Ferrand are incredibly laid back, allowing cyclists and vehicles onto the route until just before the Caravan. Others become whistle-happy monsters (Châtellerault) who go off at the merest hint of you looking to cross the road. It’s difficult for them - many are from outside the area, and it’s their biggest policing job of the year, certainly the most high-profile, and if their boss tells them to take a strict line, they have to obey.

Fortunately, the town of Revel had a benign police force who let me cross the route, and I parked in the local Intermarché car park, and then rode along the route, up the drag that is the Category 3 climb of Côte-de-Saint-Ferréol. But I forgot to switch on my bike computer, so my studding performance on the 350 metres climb goes unrecorded.

The mysterious red-helmeted verifier was there at the climb again - this time a woman - and I watched and saw write down the first three riders over the climb, whilst someone videoed it for her on her phone. These verifiers must phone in their results soon after, and these must form the official results we see on TV screens soon after a climb. You can see her writing the results down on left in the video below, and then running off to her motorbike. I’ve now noticed them at climbs on the TV too.

After that, it was back to the car and head for my accommodation on the outskirts of Montpellier. along the way I passed or was passed by much of the Caravan (sometimes on the backs of lorries) and plenty of team cars, all coming from Carcassonne and heading for the Rhône. My appartement tonight is basically a converted garage. It’s fine, but very functional, especially compared to the other Airbnb accommodation I’ve had.

Tomorrow is a rest day, and apart from a few chores and a bit of sightseeing it will be a rest for me. At least this place has access to a pool, so I’ve got the opportunity for a bit of relaxation.

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