The return of Le Tour - Gap

Hot on the heels of Le Tour again (sorry in advance the next couple are Tour de France blogs so if ur not interested consider this your advance warning) we headed inland to Gap – about a 200km drive. After frustrating trips on smaller free roads we relented and decided to pay for the toll roads.

Le Tour @ Gap for 2 DAYS!

Le Driver

Le navigator (sans Jim)



Everything was going smoothly until a call from Dad enquiring if we had made a $1300 purchase – turns out the card details had been used to pay an energy bill in the UK which had cleaned ou what we had left in the travel account. Luckily Dad was on the case and able to call the bank, have the card blocked and an emergency temporary one issued overseas phew.

So back to the Tour.

We arrived in Gap and visited the tourist info centre to get the course details. The riders were coming in from Paul Troix Chateaux, hitting the outskirts of Gap and then deviating away for a small mountain climb before finishing back in Gap.

Dave at the Gap finishing line - yes it was cold and rainy

We found the finish line easily, it was typically choccas so we walked down to about 500m to go and were easily able to get a barrier spot with great access to the caravans freebies (the caravan is like a parade that comes through before the race to entertain the people and give out free lollies, hats etc).

At around the 5km to go mark (the stage was 162.5km long) the French commentator started repeating the name Cadel Evans, L’stralie over and over, so we figured Cadel must be doing something good (plus some French people kept saying L’Stralie and giving us the thumbs up). Turns out Cadel, Sanchez and Contador had made a break from the peloton to make up about 1min on the yellow jersey.

The start of the Le Caravan - the yellow jersey of course!

Dave is his snazzy Carefour king of the mountain cap

Alberto Contador whizzes past

We got to see them come through quite closely about 5mins from the stage winner. It was quite odd because the pack were really split up and there were a bunch of little breakaway groups before the main peloton.

One of the breakaway groups

Lampre on cruise mode

After the race we squeezed our way back into Gap to meet up with Tom and Bec for their final dinner before returning back to Australia. We even had a special dessert prepared in the boys honour, with the waitress organising to write their names on the plate.

Dessert in honour of Le David (Toms said Le Cornu - which is actually his surname, Le Sandison just didnt have the same ring)

As the finish town Gap was where the ride was starting from the following day we decided to stick around to watch the start. The stage was set for a longer ride of 179.5km into the Alps and finishing in Pinorolo Italy.

Once again we visited the tourist info office to make sure we had the right starting location/street. Turned out it was the same street with the riders going in the revese direction to where they had ridden in to finish the day before.

We nailed an excellent position up on a stand set aside for wheelchairs telling the guy on the entrance we just wanted a photo and then we just thought we’d stay there until someone came to kick us out – which they didn’t YAY!

20th July - the start line in Gap

So we got a really great closeup view of all the starters, only thing was Cadel seems to be camera shy and we always seem to miss him. This time he was down the back talking to a Rabobank rider the whole time.

The riders hanging out before they ehad to the start line



Ok so Cadel is towards the right side of the middle of the photo behind the Omega Pharma Loto meer cat looking straight at the camera. He is in BMC uniform (red with black across chest and talking to a Rabobank guy (orange and blue)



The 4 jerseys at the start line

"I have a flag", "oh look that guy up there has a flag"
The very French start of the stage for the day...

Once they had left and the town returned to some normality, we made a stop at Maccas to use the Wifi to check the bank account transactions which seemed to be all legit – except for the gaping big hole where $1300 used to be. All goodand can be disputed by printing and faxing a form to the bank in Austrlia – easier said than done! A job for the coming days.

Once the admin work was done we hit the road for Briancon (pronounced Bree-An-Son). Along the way we passed a beautiful (man made) lake in the valley so we thought where better to have lunch. It was  here we met local windsurfer Claude (I just made up his name – not sure what it really was, but I thought Claude sounded French) who told us all about the local geology and meterology. He also told us how the locals hate Le Tour as all the roads get blocked and everyone leaves behind tonnes of litter – he was definitely a bit of a greeny.

Lac de Serre-Ponçon

More of the Lake - it was HUGE!

When we got to Briancon – a cute little ski town at the bottom of the Serre Chevilear wth wooden chalets. We pulley up at Cinque Valles (5 Valleys) Camping, which was really busy and turning people away. Luckily we had prebooked- although they couldn’t find our booking anywaythey let us stay. I did have an email booking confirmation just in case but didn’t need to use it.

We worked out  plan of attack for the next couple of days with me even translating French road closures – I am getting quite talented in the research department and my written French is improving (plus Google Translate helps :D)

Dave... drinking

Me working hard on French to English tranaslations, blogging etc