Stage 20 - Megeve to Morzine. A final day in the mountains but yet a third straight day involving Megeve. It was the 'Ville Arivee' for the time trial stage and the Tour passed through yesterday on its way to Le Bettex.
Pronunciation Update - Le Bettex...don't worry about the x because the French certainly don't. Think Frank Spencer and say 'ooh Betty' but as you leave the last t change the y to the e in egg. So, with me, Le Bette.
Back to Megeve and just to prove that it has friends in rich places, it had also secured a 'ville depart' for today's stage. We left our hotel and Saint Gervais and set off for Megeve nice and early but with traffic already building we parked up in the small village of Demi Quartier (Think Demi Moore and pronounce Quartier as if you were saying cafetière - as I'm sure you do regularly), which was just outside of Megeve.
We walked in to town and it was already very busy. It is a one road in and out kind of place so trying to bring the Tour in was always going to be difficult. Some riders decided that it would be easier to ride to the start than be on the team bus, which meant we saw all of Team Sky arrive. All the teams arrived and the caravan departed but it was clear from the size of the crowd and the layout of the buses that it would be very difficult to see the riders properly so we decided to head in to town and catch the riders as they rolled past to start the stage.
Megeve is not quite your standard ski resort town as it had been gentrified and contains a Superdry shop and another that just sells Polo based polo shirts which is just what you need up a mountain. Not that a Superdry shop is the chief indicator as that would make Reading more than it is.
Walking to the barriers we met the couple who we had met in the bar of the hotel yesterday, who had their first taste of the Tour. They had taken three cable cars to get to Megeve and when we got there she was clapping any team car that came passed. They had so much enthusiasm for the race that it was great. After a bit of chat I discovered that they were from Twickenham and she loves Longacres garden centre, who doesn't we agreed. The conversation did turn slightly when she suggested that both Lance Armstrong and wait for it.....wait....Jimmy Saville had both taken the brunt for a lot of other people. Very diplomatically I said something about that not being a point of view I had heard before and then mentioned that I thought by stage 20 I would have heard everything!
Thankfully the riders rolled by to start the 'fictional start'. They have two starts the fictional, a kind of ceremonial start where the jersey leaders start at the front and everyone stays behind the red lead car at a gentleman's pace. After usually 5km they have the 'real start' where a flag is dropped to signify the end of the neutral zone, the red car pulls away and racing can commence in earnest.
We were at the fictional start and they all rolled through (relative of course), and just like that we set off for the car, picked up a bit of lunch and diesel, set Bruce for Paris and off we went.
The early part of the journey was the most eventful as we went through a couple of big thunderstorms which were always followed by brilliant sunshine. With Chris in the car we navigated the six peage stations with ease and after a mere 6 hours of two lane motorway driving an entire playlist and a lot of sweets, the cheer went up as the Eiffel Tower came in to view.
I panicked slightly and threw the car in to an underground car park, where I was pleased to hear they were playing music over the tannoy. I
work on the basis that if you are going to play music in a car park you're already ahead of the game in car park security. The car park however was a mile from the hotel and we had to carry our stuff through an already very busy Paris evening.
The sun was setting as we crossed the Seine and I was acting like a normal tourist, taking photos and annoying people. The hotel is better than expected based on previous Paris hotel experience and dinner was...of course a cheese pizza (though only three not four) and we carried on the Tourist theme with a crepe as we looked up at a lit up Notre Dame. A couple of streets away, a music festival was being held with probably a good couple of thousand that had tickets and were inside the makeshift venue. This artist was clearly a name in France and lots of people were nearby so they could at least hear. It was all a bit lost on so we headed back for a night cap.
And that was the end of a very strange day. I started at stage 20 and I've ended the day in Paris where you wouldn't know the Tour was arriving tomorrow. On the drive over we saw some of the team buses, two Mavic service cars and a couple of vehicles who must have been the start of the advanced party. Getting the riders here is would be the easiest part, flying in from Geneva but hauling the entire Tour the 6 hours, seeing as the stage only finished at 5pm yesterday is some doing. I have been
thinking about how they will get the giant madelaine here for some time.
Due to the transfer we have a later start tomorrow and the race doesn't start until late afternoon, so doesn't arrive on the Paris circuit until 17:45 and by 19:00 it will be over and I will most likely have a sit down.
Stats
Miles driven - 3185
Number of shops visited in Megeve looking for tat but failing - 4
Cheese of the day - more or the Rocamadour I had at the time trial
Tat of the day - for probably the final time it was yet another skoda hat.
Most expensive toll - €44.30
Number of photos taken on this trip - 2390 (I will be starting a tour of people I know to show every photo as well as test them on this blog)
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