Advertisement
Published: July 31st 2014
During the Tour de France the king of the mountain wears a red polka dot jersey! Our planned route led us to Lourdes to see the fourth last leg of the tour, and the gruelling mountain legs of Col du Tourmalet and Hautacam. Seeing the Tour de France has been a life long dream of George's, and our holiday motto of 'don't leave a man behind' meant we were all committed to a very long, but exciting day.
The mountain legs were about a fifteen minute drive out of Lourdes, so we were up very early to prepare for our day. We had baguettes,water, snacks, wine, towels, sunscreen..even serviettes, the bags were very heavy. Thanks George, Jen and Michael for carrying the bags. After brekky we drove Pablo to a little town at the base of Hautacam. George estimated it would take about three or four hours (probably more)to walk to the top of the mountain, which is where the finish line for the days race would be ...uugghh. I'm not a mountain goat, I do not like walking up little hils, let alone mountains.
There were thousands of people of all ages, shapes and sizes walking and cycling
to the top of the mountain. They were excited for the day ahead. About an hour or so into our mountain trek, we stopped for a delicious crepe (as you do when you are walking up mountains in the beautiful French countryside). After another forty five or so minutes of walking uphill with the incline between 6 and 8 percent (getting steeper) we found a great spot on the side of the road to set up for the day, laid out our towels and sat down for a rest. All we had to do now was wait ....the cyclists hadn't even started this leg of the race yet, they were still 145.5 kilometres away! (A short leg this day as it was a mountain leg). This meant we probably had about a six hour wait ahead of us..we kept ourselves amused with people watching, eating, drinking and for me a little snooze (it's hard work mountain climbing! and the excitement was just too much!). Finally around 4 o'clock we heard the noise of helicopters coming closer, which meant the tour and the end of the days racing was getting closer. YAY! The cyclists had completed Col du Tourmalet and were
fast approaching us and the finish line on the last mountain of the day.
Suddenly the mountain came alive with a frenzy of different activity, there was music and cars, trucks, promotional floats coming up the mountain throwing all sorts of promotional paraphernalia to the crowd. After waiting so long everyone was getting very excited. Our day was made when George caught the king of the mountain spotted jersey (t-shirt) he had the biggest, happiest grin on his face! From then on you could feel the excitement mounting.
I said earlier it would take a person about three or more hours to walk the 17ish kilometres to the top of Hautacam and obviously the tour guys are elite athletes for sure, but they are machines! Already they had ridden almost 140 kilometres and had ridden up and down the Col du Tourmalet and suddenly here they were speeding past us like they had just started their race at the bottom of the mountain, it was quite incredible! They were up the mountain in little more than 30 minutes!!
It took us just over an hour to walk down from our spot half way up the mountain! I
Vincenzo Nibali
The eventual winnerdidn't think I would ever see the Tour de France ...but there I was sitting on the side of the mountain cheering like a crazy person!
PS: that day we clocked a PB ourselves....40,000 steps, walked almost 28 kilometres and an elevation of 230 floors!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.091s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 13; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0485s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Ros Collins
non-member comment
Le Tour
Omg!!! What an incredibly exciting day. You guys are clearly having the holiday of a lifetime. It's all so interesting and amazing. You'll need to come home for a holiday!! Love Rozzi :)