Monday 4 July 2016

Stage Three - Time to hit the road

After the opening weekend of 'Le Grand Boucle' which took place entirely in Normandie, the race moved on through Bretagne and on to Angers in Loire. I caught the race today in a village called Bille where it appeared that the entire village had decided not to bother with work or school today. The flag flew, the bobble hat was on and we didn't see a spot of rain.

Stage 3 is, like tomorrow, a transitional stage. Designed to take the race from the depart weekend to the next significant stages that could affect the race, in this case Stage 5 and the climbs in the Massif Centrale. While not being significant in who can ultimately win the race the cliche goes that it could lose someone the race. So while the favourites for overall try and stay out of trouble it is the sprinters teams that come to the fore and it is days like this where they earn there money.

This also meant to end of my four day stay at the B&B. I had got quite used to coming back to it after the stage so it will take a some planning as I now move from hotel to hotel until Sunday when I reach Andorra.

No start town for me today, so I can't tell you much about Granville, apart from the fact, that yes, it was in fact named after the 1980's BBC sitcom featuring Barker and Jason. A lesser none fact is that every Sunday, a person is declared an 'Arkwright' for doing something stupid and made to wear a brown apron all week. FACT.

I decided to head for the Feed zone, which is the designated area on each stage where the riders are permitted to pick up their lunch. This is done in the non-scientific way of a man holding out bags (musettes) which the riders grab as they go past. It also means that the race tends to be going a bit slower and is a bit more spread out. (This is all relative of course).

Another good selection of shouts at the flag as I wandered to my spot, lots of 'Froome' today but still lots of Brexit and one slightly aggressive signing of  'Allez Blue'. I turned down the chance of a drink with a group of 20 people having a party in their garden and waved the flag a bit for the old people from a home who had been wheeled out. I also helped some kids collect freebies from the publicity caravan and gave them anything I got (apart from the Haribo and mini madelaine). Afterwards one of them came over and gave me something that Brittany Ferries had given out because it had a Union Jack on it.

The solo breakaway came through, with a very relaxed peleton sorting out their lunch about five minutes behind. From Bille it was on to Angers. My planning failed today and the 100 mile drive took longer than anticipated and I ended up not making it to the finish. I actually arrived in the town as Mark Cavendish was winning with helicopters overhead.

So all in all a fairly quiet day, my hotel room is tiny but the town itself is lovely, a big castle, cathedral and a river what else do you need? It's all street bars and restaurants but narrow windy streets which were nice to explore, watched some street hockey and had a pizza containing an unspecified number of cheeses.

Stat Attack
Miles covered - 825
Miles cycled - still 40
Counties passed through - still 2
Cheese of the day - the remainder of the Tomme and all of the cheeses on the formaggio pizza.
Number of times seen the race go past - 5
Tat of the day - another road sign, which I got post race in Bille.

Blog Extra - French town pronunciation special.

Two pronunciation of towns today, Rennes and Angers. Let's do Angers first. It is not as in 'Peter continually angers his parents'. Say On as if you are putting on a really silly French accent and then when comfortable to continue add 'Ger' but a soft ger. On (silly accent) Ger (softly), well done. That conquered we can move on to Rennes. Now spend a little time looking at the word, play with it, try some alternatives, get a feel for it...ready, right now forget it because the word itself written down will not help.
Step 1 - imagine you are a ticket tout who only uses one side of his mouth to talk, like a spy if you will.
Step 2 - for those who know Father Ted think Father Jack in his chair shouting, if you don't know it, just think like a drunk.
Step 3 - Now the delivery and bare in mind we still haven't yet got to the point of making a sound. You need to start with your mouth half closed, left side open (ticket tout), now turn your head to the left and image that you are throwing something with your mouth to the right. Tossing the word to the right.
Ok, now the word. Start with 'Re'. That's all you need. Deliver Re as per step 1-3 and you will have cracked it, but at the end just put on the slightest hint of an 'n', for closure. Well done. At some point we will cover Reims but that's a whole post on its own.

Photo Corner

Angers castle looking fairly impenetrable 

Lamprey have their mussets out ready

The river Maine running through Angers 

A cathedral

The solo breakaway has a spot of lunch


1 comment:

  1. Love the pronunciation class. Ned would be proud.

    Did you bag a muessette?!

    ReplyDelete