French Revolutions

writer,
although I do look a bit of a bottom right now, but that’s because I, um...’
    ‘You ’ave a card? A press card?’
    ‘Yes! No.’
    It was looking bad, but I had an
idea. I unhooked a pannier and began rummaging about, withdrawing a toothbrush,
three socks and an El-11 EC healthcare certificate that instantly blew away as
the wind abruptly picked up. Aware that henceforth I would be treating my own
compound fractures with a puncture-repair kit, I finally pulled out a copy of procycling.
    ‘Here! This is the UK’s premier publication for bikists,’ I said in what had at least begun as an
authoritative drawl. ‘We run all sorts of features on pedals, handlebars,
Savlon...’
    She took the magazine and, having
perfunctorily flicked through it, began examining the staff list on the
masthead with the suspicious intensity of an Israeli border guard.
    ‘Last month we blew the lid off Fig
Newtons.’
    ‘And your poste...?’ she enquired
briefly.
    Well, that was easy. ‘Technical
Editor.’
    ‘So you are... Steeeeve Robinson?’
    ‘That’s my name — don’t wear it out.’
    ‘Well, Monsieur Robinson, you ’ave a
question?’
    I looked at my hands and realised I’d
put the gloves on the wrong ones. ‘Yes. It’s quite easy, actually: I’d just
like to know the route of the first stage of the Tour de France.’
    Her face lit up. ‘No, no, no! I’m
sorry, but it is not possible to say zis!’
    ‘But the exact details were announced
yesterday.’
    She laughed horribly. ‘No, no! It’s a
beeeeeeeg secret!’
    ‘The Tour de France press office told
me that—’
    This was a serious tactical error,
opening up whole new avenues down which bucks could be leisurely passed. ‘Eh
bien, well, you must talk wiss zem about it. Beeeeg secret ’ere!’
    ‘It’s not a very good secret,
though, is it? The stage is only 16 kilometres long.’
    We were now deep into shrug
territory.
    ‘But I’m almost certainly more
important than you,’ I said as the door eased shut in my face.
    Cycling the long way round the
enormous car parks into an already dispiriting headwind I took stock. My
diminutive procycling Tour map implied that the prologue looped
northwards from Futuroscope; only one road appeared to head off in this
direction and after circling the roundabout in front of the Ibis about seven
times I found it.
    In less than five minutes I was in
peasants-and-poppies rurality, an astonishing contrast with Futuroscope, but no
doubt part of the reason the still heavily agricultural French are so obsessed
with flaunting their technology. As a TGV powered steadily across a distant
field as if being reeled in — the antithesis of that Thomas the Tank Engine
affair aboard which I’d rattled through Kent — I remembered reading somewhere
that as recently as 1965 only 15 per cent of French homes had telephones.
    In less than ten minutes, of course,
I was lost. I’d expected the route to be in some way obvious, lined with floral
displays and bunting, but, standing at a windswept hilltop crossroads
surrounded by a billion acres of oil-seed rape and lowing cattle, I realised it
was not. Feeling lonely and ridiculous, I allowed myself to be blown back to
Futuroscope, where I again circled the roundabout while wondering how to
salvage something from this towering anticlimax.
    Forty minutes later, I braked to a
slightly messy halt in a corner of one of Futuroscope’s desolate overspill car
parks. In several dozen clockwise circuits, before an understandably curious
audience of two gardeners and a coach driver, I had completed my prologue;
managing to focus on my odometer between ragged exhalations I established that
the 16 kilometres had been undertaken at an average speed of 27.7 k.p.h., with
a maximum speed of 36.5. I knew the pros would average twice that, but it
didn’t matter. My Tour had begun.
    I was hot then and a lot hotter when
I dropped the car off in Poitiers and cycled back to find the route of stage
two. The wind had blown itself out, and as I assembled first ZR3000 and then a
complex baguette sandwich in the fascinatingly hideous car-rental lot, the sun
sat on me with its full weight. I’d never been to Poitiers, and thought the old
town seemed worth a look, but with Brie being fondued in my lap and the bike’s
blue crossbar almost too hot to touch I just wanted to hit the road and get
some wind in my hair.
    Richard or Matthew or Simon or
someone had told me the heat wouldn’t be a problem until