Now The Tour Really Begins

Might seem a daft thing to say on the day the third stage takes place (198 km from Olonne-sur-Mer to Redon) but the last two days have really been sparring and the real racing begins as the peloton moves out of the Vendee across the Loire and into Brittany.

Saturday's first stage saw the winner of last years tour Alberto Contador suffer more than any of the other GC contenders when he lost more than a minute following several accidents in the last ten kilomteres or so. Yesterdays short team time trial saw the yellow jersey pass from Philipe Gilbert to the big Viking Thor Hushovd as the American team Garmin-Cervelo won their first ever Tour stage win. The top four riders after the first two stages include two Britons: David Millar and Geraint Thomas.

The stage to Redon goes through parts of France I know quite well in fact Redon itself is the centrepiece of one of my favourite stories about the French laissez-faire attitude to road repairs in the provinces back in the late seventies/early eighties.  Mt first overseas holiday took place in 1978 when, with a mate from school, we drove down the Cherbourg peninsula, via Mont St.Michel and onto the southern Brittany town of La Baule. La Baule wasn't the happening place it is now, back then it was a sleepy village sandwiched between a railway line to the north and the sea to the south. An illustration of how much has changed in the thirty odd years since is that the countryside camping site we stayed at is now well within the town boundaries. Anyway we couldn't drive through Redon, which was the direct route, because of roadworks and had to endure a ten mile 'deviation'  which wasn't so unpleasant due to the company, music and the surrounding countryside.

A year later I am making the same journey with my then girlfriend and a few miles outside of Redon I tell her the story I have noted above, we get to the same place as the year before and once again the road is closed for roadworks and we have a ten mile 'deviation'. Now to be fair I have no idea if the road was opened in the intervening twelve months but it did make a good story. In 2005 when we went to La Baule as a family I did eventually get to Redon as the road was open, the new road does actually by-pass the town but having waited twenty six years to get there I made a 'deviation' of my own.

Looking at the photographs of the approach to Redon from the south this looks like it is tailor-made for Mark Cavendish. Hopefully he can get stage win number sixteen but Alessandro Petacchi, Thor Hushovd and Tyler Farrar should also be in the mix at the end.