The one with the cock up

Tour de France 2025

Tuesday 22 July: Stage 16 Montpellier - Mont Ventoux
By car: 238 km
By bike: 7 km

Tat: Haribo, Ibis toiletries bag, La Vache Qui Rit cap, 21 Century keyring

It’s the 22nd of July ! How on earth can it be the 22nd of July?? I’ve been on the road for 20 days. 



I suppose there had to be one day that didn’t go to plan. I had to leave my garage accommodation by 11am, but I was ready to go on the road just after 10. I didn’t fancy standing around in the midday sun by the banks of the Rhône for over four hours. Equally I wasn’t enamoured to stay in my accommodation any longer than I had to.

I remembered that Montpelier had a fan park and I wasn’t that far from the city centre. Slightly ambitious but I could probably drive as far as I could, and then cycle the rest of the way to the cit centre. I found a parking space right on the edge of the cordon, got the bike out and cycled straight to the fan park, only to find of course, that bikes weren’t allowed into it and I wasn’t going to risk leaving the Brompton alone outside.


I walked around and then saw there was another security gate. So I did what Brompton’s do best - folded it up and sailed straight through security… only to be foiled a couple of metres later by those inline rain gratings. One of the Brompton’s rear roller wheels got caught in the grating and it started to unfold on me as I’m struggling with it. Security guy comes over and says you’re not allow bikes in here - even folding ones. Damn !  I would’ve got away with it if it wasn’t for that pesky drain.


It was probably all for the good in any case because the traffic getting out of Montpelier was terrible, queues everywhere, everything at a crawl. At one point Google Maps seemed to take its usual delight of directing me down random country roads, but I saw we were running parallel to the main road and bypassed a huge queue. The autoroute was equally busy, and it was slow going all the way. There were more queues around Avignon, and by now I was running late and in danger of just missing the Caravan. I took the route to get to the riverside road only to find it was just 4 km of rough track. Change of plan - again across country through a very exclusive vineyard lined with cypress trees and arrived at the route soon after the Caravan started passing through.


In the end, I didn’t get to the river road. I didn’t see the intermediate sprint. What I got was quite a nice backdrop of very expensive vineyards and Mont Ventoux, and very close to the riders. There’s a really good shot below of Teddy Pogačar.


Back onto the motorway again to see that most curious of things - a four-lane French motorway.

I’m spending this evening on the beautiful town of Crest, alongside the River Drôme. 



Likely spot me tomorrow at : Col de Tartaiguille (43.4 km remaining)

Tomorrow's T-shirt: the eyeball-grating Lidl Trek 

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Location: 26400 Crest, France

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