Fin

Tour de France 2025

Sunday 27 July: Stage 21 Mantes-la-Ville - Paris Champs-Élysées

By car: 0 km
By bike: 0 km

Walking: 14 km

Paris is in lockdown. Perhaps understandable as this city, and this country has suffered terribly at the hands of terrorists.There's no way of getting near the Arc de Triomphe - it’s barriered off two streets away, and I made the mistake of getting off the metro north of the access/evacuation route which is equally  heavily barriered and policed. However, a quick detour via an underground car park puts me on the right side. I does however mean there’s no practical way to get from the Champs Élysées towards the Montmartre circuit - it’s one or the other. 

The whole world seems to be here, including Parisien woman in all their Sunday finery. The Champs Élysées itself (themselves 🤔) is packed, and there’s surprisingly little viewing space. A lot of restaurants have roadside terrasses, and also the major Tour sponsors have large areas to entertain the great and the good. Skoda and Tissot (timing) have large ones by the Sprint line, and you can see plenty of Champagne chilling at the back. These are all guarded by menacing security. In what space is left, old hands have already set up their chairs and banners. There’s a Danish ‘corner’ just beyond the sprint line, presumably hoping for a Kasper Asgreen victory.

There’s a celebratory procession of the Caravan - lots of noise and mildly crazy driving, but no tat. Equally, most of the support vehicles and services that have followed the Tour get a little chance to parade up and down. There’s a brief shower as all this goes on, but the roads (little cobbled setts) soon dry up. Being in a capital city this is the first time I’m getting very good 5G coverage on my mobile, so I also get the luxury of watching ITV’s last-ever Tour de France coverage. 

Eventually the riders enter Paris, and soon the Champs Élysées - an unexpectedly emotional moment, and they whizz by. It’s not until you’re actually there that you realise just how much of a climb it is to the Arc de Triomphe, and because there’s an equal descent, just how fast they cycle back down. The team cars do struggle to keep up. 

And then the skies darkened and the heavens opened. After a while the rain really hammered down and most people (including myself) sought what cover they could. I think at some point ITVs servers became swamped, and I had to watch the last circuit on France 2, swapping back to ITV just before Wout Van Aert crossed the line in a truly memorable ride. 

As the rain eased, people moved towards the presentation ceremony - but not that close because there’s a vast array of barriers (and gendarmes). Fortunately there’s a big screen, so I’ve got the curious experience of hearing events live, seeing the vast array of TV lights come on and off, watching that on the big screen, and 45 seconds or so later on ITV. Once the yellow jersey is presented people start to drift off, and by the time the ITV show wraps for the last time ever - the show that has been part of my life for nearly 40 years - I’m stood almost alone by a Metro sign. A fitting end. 

As I’m in Paris, I take the opportunity to see the newly renovated Vasque - the balloon in the Tuileries that represented the Flame in last year’s Olympic Games. I have to take a slightly tortuous route as the roads by the Tuileries are all locked down, and I have to take the newly-pedestrianised quayside below the road. And there, lying on this path that won’t have been used much today because there’s no view of the race, lies a bidon, the holy grail for thousands of spectators. It’s obviously just been tossed over the wall by a rider. 

It takes my thoughts back to my writings on stage 2. I pick it up and the circle seems complete.

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