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Tour de France 2025

Friday 25 July: Stage 19 Albertville - La Plagne
By car: 209 km
By bike: 0 km

Tat: A can of Tourtel (évidemment), Skoda hat, FDJ sac, Continental tyre

Sleepily looking at social media this morning I saw an entry by a cycling website on Facebook. Today’s stage had been shortened to 95 km. I scrabbled around for more details - which are shamefully lacking. I appreciate this was a decision made around 10pm last night, but there’s currently (9am) very little publicity about this. I even got an email from Tour de France about 30 minutes ago about today’s stage, and still mentioning the two climbs that have been removed. It has been verified on X and the Tour’s general app in one small news item, but many thousands of people will be going to the stage not knowing it won’t be held there any more. It’s going to be heartbreaking for the little town of Ugine, where I stayed last night. The restaurants were full, the town was buzzing, and everyone was looking forward to hosting the Intermediate Sprint stage.

It’s also a huge blow to young Scot Oscar Onley. Yesterday he made huge strides in the race for both the third step on the podium and the Young Riders’ (White) jersey. losing two climbs will severely dent his chances of picking up more time on his opponent Florian Lipowitz. Anyway, it’s a quick getaway this morning, and dash towards Albertville. This being the Alps there are very limited opportunities (ie non) to cut cross-country. I would either have to try driving on the original route, which may be still closed and goes in completely the wrong direction for me, or try driving along the new route, which will be chockablock with twitchy gendarmes who don’t really know what’s going on.

The route has been cut because there’s been an outbreak of contagious nodular dermatitis in a herd by the Col des Saisies which “…has necessitated the culling of the animals. In light of the distress experienced by the affected farmers and in order to preserve the smooth running of the race, it has been decided, in agreement with the relevant authorities, to modify the route of Stage 19 (Albertville–La Plagne) and to avoid the ascent to the Col des Saisies…” which is French longhand for ‘the farmers would have seriously kicked off if we had run the route along the Col des Saisies today’.

There were all sorts of rumours circulating in Ugine about which roads were closed with a major one being that the whole of Albertville was already locked down. I got in the car, gave it a try, and had parked on the outskirts of Albertville by 10am. This did give me the chance to look around Albertville - home to the 1992 Winter Olympics. The town has evidently tried to set itself up as a rival to Geneva with high end jewellery and watch shops, and the main street seemingly  populated by very old, very tanned widows, and very old, very drunk (at 10am) men. I very much doubt they’re the same demographic.

I’ve never seen such fear, confusion, and panic on the face of cycle fans before. Big groups of lean, bronzed riders intending to ride some of the route standing around wondering what on earth to do. Flurries of Tour de France officials bustling around the town with sheaves of papers in the hands looking extremely worried. And Slovenians and Germans. Lots of Slovenians and Germans. The French border is relatively close to them here. I braved the village départ again, and singularly failed to win a Vache Qui Rit t-shirt again. They’re hard-nosed on that stand 😂

Anyway, the race did start, a little later than planned, and actually came past my car, which was in a car park sufficiently big that it continued past the barrage, and within 10 minutes of the riders passing I was on my way. And yes, all those posh grannies were out on the street ferociously scrabbling for tat when the Caravan came through.

Despite what I say below, the drive over to Oyonnax this afternoon was very attractive, particularly when you transition from the Alps into Haut Jura. The landscape is still spectacular, but on a more human scale, and there’s some breathtaking engineering on the autoroute A40 beyond Geneva. 

I had intended to write about the Alps today. It’s my third day here, and apart from one ski trip, it was my first real chance to see the Alps region close up. The mountains are undoubtedly larger than the Pyrenees, but compared to them, they lack charm. The human impact here doesn’t so much sit in the landscape as force itself upon it. It’s far more industrial than the Pyrenees, with an architecture aesthetic somewhere between the huge anonymous metal sheds of British industrial, and the massive concrete residential blocks of French ski resort. Attractive it is not. Even outside the fancy dan high street of Albertville, there’s unsympathetic concrete residential blocks everywhere.

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