Notes from a Belgian

Tour de France 2025

Wednesday 16 July: Stage 11 Toulouse - Toulouse
By car: 282 km
By bike: 0 km

Tat: Can of Tourtel, packet of Cochonou saucisson 

Sometimes you just have to change your plans. I stayed in, and ate in Montauban last night. It’s 50 km north of Toulouse, with a population of 60,000, but it is the prefecture (capital city) for the Tarn-et-Garonne département. It’s also one of the most beautiful and laid-back cities I’ve come across. It’s got the most fantastic restaurant scene. I ate a very good Ethiopian, but I could also see Indian, Thai, Chinese, Mexican, French tacos (🤷🏻‍♂️), Japanese, Italian, French obv, South African, and Vietnamese. Walking back after the meal, the town was full of people relaxing with a drink on the street terrasses. It’s a very cool town. 

So cool I decided to change plans, and go and see the Intermediate Sprint stage later in the afternoon, so I could spend the morning in the old centre. I dropped into the very helpful tourist information and said how the red brick architecture is reminiscent of Toulouse - La Ville Rose - The Pink City. He told me that there are actually three Villes Rose - Toulouse, Albi and Montauban, and we agreed Montauban is on a human scale, rather than Toulouse, the fourth-largest city in France. I wandered round the Old Town, had a nice coffee in the Place National, and generally spent a relaxing morning in Montauban. I can definitely recommend the city and will be back.

Driving over to the sprint, it seems there are plenty of villes rose. The rolling landscape is punctured by little villages on hilltops, all built from red brick. It is very beautiful. It took over an hour to get to the sprint as the motorway route would have put me inside today’s circular route, and I didn’t want to be at the mercy of road closures. Anyway, I got there using a very scenic route, saw my first-ever Intermediate Sprint (another tick-off 😃), and generally had a good time. 

Tomorrow the Tour heads for the high Pyrenees and the Hautacam climb. I couldn’t guarantee being able to stick to my schedule if I risked watching on the the HC (hors catégorie) climbs, so it will be a Cat 4 climb tomorrow, but then up into the Pyrenees for two nights in an appartement. Annoyingly, with this year’s meandering route, the sprint was less than 20 km away from where I will be staying on Saturday.

Just one last thing. Even since I arrived in Lille, I’ve been asked the same question when chatting to people: « Êtes-vous belge ? ».  I finally got the chance to ask someone why they think I’m Belgian. They explained my French is fairly good and understandable, but my intonation is wrong. As they said - you chop up the words. Just like Belgians. I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not. 😃

Likely spot me tomorrow at : Montaner (random roadside spot) - 117 km remaining  

Tomorrow's T-shirt: Spotty E.Leclerc KoM - so I’ll be invisible 

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