Sportswashing

Tour de France 2025

Monday 21 July: Rest Day (Repos) 2
By car: 0 km
By bike: 0 km

Socks have proved my Achilles heel (apologies for the pun). I would have needed another clothes wash before Paris, but I was running out of clean socks first. So my first Rest Day activity was to find the Laverie. 

Some of you may have experienced French launderettes in the past. The traumas over the correct money, the money drawers, the soap powder dispensers, the unpredictability. They’ve really cleaned up their act nowadays (sorry again), and it’s all automatic. Put you clothes in, pay by card, come back 30 minutes later. The machine adds detergent and anything else you need. Et voilà! A clean pair of heels.


You will have noticed that the Tour dispenses tat liberally across the countryside. Not literally any more - there are now restrictions on sprinkling tat over the most ecologically-sensitive areas. It never fails to amaze me how people of all ages are immediately reduced to competitive scrambling for keyrings, hats, and packets of pasta. There’s honour amongst some thieves though. Yesterday I caught a headband in front of a young lad. When I offered it to him he was very insistent that it was mine (I suppose I should have kept it for bartering) - I snatched first, so I keep it. I’ve no desire to resurrect a 1985 Dire Straits look, and eventually he took it - but only after persuasion.

Groupe Bel, who amongst other brands make Babybel, Leerdammer, Boursin, and Tour sponsor La Vache Qui Rit (Laughing Cow) will distribute 400,000 La Vache Qui Rit cycling caps this year. I don’t know how many tonnes of chocolate biscuits and snacks E.Leclerc give out, but if you look on the photo, you can see that each morning the vehicles are ladened with sacks of snacks to throw out during the day.


A French start to the commute.
As you live in an appartement block close by, you can walk, cycle or scooter to the local boulangerie, and take your viennoise, coffee, (and cigarette) on the terrasse outside.
Seems a more relaxed lifestyle to me, and definitely a better way to start the working day.

Likely spot me tomorrow at : A couple of km before the Intermediate Sprint at Châteauneuf-du-Pape (between 64 and 60 km remaining). On the Pont de Roquemaure over the River Rhône (64 km) - if they let me on it, which I doubt.

Tomorrow's T-shirt: Totale Energies (mainly white) [Dirty white if you watched last night’s ITV4 highlights]

What’s this all about ? New readers start here

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Location: 34170 Castelnau-le-Lez, France

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