The Road to Rouen

Tour de France 2025

Tuesday 8 July: Stage 4 Amiens Métropole - Rouen
By car: 133 km
By bike: 38 km

Tat: A couple of bags, AG2R hat - all won at the finish, The crowd at Bonsecours were vicious

For British drivers of a certain age, the mere mention of Rouen can still turn them into gibbering wrecks. You would happily drive along the A28 from Calais or Boulogne, looking forward to your holiday, spotting the different sporting activities as you passed the bridges, anticipating a stop-off at Le Mans or Tours, or perhaps taking the A13 to Calvados and Normandy. But the fun stopped at Rouen, along wth the A28.

Rouen was a black hole. If you were lucky, you would cross by Pont Mathilde and have a relatively easy journey - but you never took the same route through Rouen twice. It was only when you  passed the massive railway marshalling yards on your right, that you knew you were (relatively) safe. And then Pont Mathilde burned down. No one knew where they were going, Diversionary routes that just disappeared, lack of signage, wrong signage. It’s only since the advent of good GPS that drivers can confidentially start to tackle Rouen again.

I had driven to Rouen the previous evening, staying in a concrete monstrosity in the middle of town. I followed the Never Strays Far podcast advice from David Millar, and this morning moved my car to an E.Leclerc supermarket on the southern edge of town. It was a wise decision. 

It was about 8km back to the city centre - which was packed at 1pm. I had a wander round the finish, got an AG2R hat for riding a bike, and a couple of carrier bags (together with hats, these are invaluable when touring around). The plan had always been to cycle up to the Cat 4 Côté de Bonsecours (Stéle Jean Robic) climb and then plunge back down to the city centre and try and catch the finish. Both objectives realised, I beat the peloton by about four minutes - though they had to ride 30km and two categorised climbs, I just had to fall downhill on the Brompton for 6km. Then it was a swift nine kilometres ride back to the car. Excellently executed plan - less than 10 minutes from a parked car to the A13 autoroute and now I’m sitting in my Airbnb in Caen - my home for the next two nights. Excellent day.

 

Lessons learned

 When I was booking accommodation last November, I was worried about the availability of evening meals, and because of that booked a Rouen city centre hotel in preference to one in the southeast, which would have been better suited to a quick getaway. It turned out I had had a good meal at lunchtime (see yesterday’s blog), I definitely need to lose some weight (see yesterday’s photos - though M Bossart, the mayor of Billy-Berclau is very slim 😁), and I only needed cheese and saussicon as a light evening snack. And I definitely didn’t need to stay in a Brutalist recreation of a coal mine (see Friday and Saturday’s blogs).

Likely spot me tomorrow at : I’m going to be all over the contre le montre course tomorrow. Timing 1, Timing 3, start, finish, podium

Tomorrow's T-shirt: Black Yorkshire Grand Départ

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