On Tour

I’ve followed professional cycling closely for years now, learning its tactics, decoding the riders’ decisions with every pedal stroke, memorising sponsorship sagas and team dramas. I’ve indulged in the sport completely and utterly. And yet, I had never, not once, met someone in real life who shared this obsession.

So when I looked around at the queue for the ferry, a parade of lycra, expensive bikes, clip-clopping cleats on concrete, tan lines, and those silly little cycling caps no one looks good in, I felt a curious mix of recognition and revelation. It held up a mirror. Do I look like this?

All around me were men, women and children in full kit, adjusting saddles, unwrapping snacks, discussing gradients like they were planning a heist. But mostly, and I’ll admit this is out of character, I was thrilled. Thrilled at the chance to talk to a stranger about something I’ve bored so many loved ones with, people who smile politely as I explain breakaways and puncheurs, just to spare my feelings.

The sleeping arrangements on the ferry left a lot to be desired. I was too warm, then far too cold. By 4am, I’d given up entirely. I prized the door open to the deck and stood there, alone, watching the sun rise over the Channel. I briefly romanticised my life, thought about why I went to shake that mate of a mate’s hand, when they clearly were opting for a fistbump last month, and just as I began to spiral into thoughts about the distinct lack of joy or momentum in my professional life, land appeared.

The mythical land. The storied nation of France stood before me, glowing gently in the distance.

Bienvenue en France!

The Tour is a travelling show but one dressed in sunlight, skinsuits, and cowbells. France has to feel different when it’s Tour time. It’s not loud, it’s buzzing. Calm and electric all at once. I was embarrassingly excited to see actual road closure signs, donning an official Le Tour de France logo. It was now real and it was causing long diversions but it didn’t bother me.

Within hours of stepping off the ferry, I’d developed what I can only describe as a continental inflection. Nothing too dramatic, just a subtle shift in cadence, a tendency to add “eh?” to the end of sentences as if I’d been cycling these roads my whole life and I was completing media duties for Eurosport 2. “Beautiful day for the Tour, eh?” I’d say to myself, as if I hadn’t spent years watching it from a sofa in a grey and uncharming satellite town just north of London.

On the morning of stage 6, our campsite had gotten busier. A Danish couple, a group of Dutch men and a few ambiguously European cycling fanatics were gathering around their tents. It was parodying my own thoughts of what it would be like to see the Tour in person.

By late morning, and just a short walk from a clammy tent, the road begins to fill: campers wedded into their positions, campervans perfectly situated, families with comfortable fold-out chairs, the locals really know how to do it properly and I looked across enviously at the never ending picnics. I was a novice, I was just happy to be there.

8 Secondes

Maybe you’re not meant to see it for too long. Maybe those images need to flash before your eyes, not linger, nor allow for inspection. Maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to focus on it too clearly. The whole ordeal should overwhelm you, immersing you, but never fully and completely indulge you in its spectacle. I’m already twisting my neck to follow but they’re gone, swallowed by the curve of the street. They’re somebody else’s moment now. The act rushes over you, indivisible, luminous, then gone. You’re left unsure of what you saw, only certain that you felt it.

The road returns to being just a road. Cars will drive here tomorrow. The barriers will come down, the crowds will disperse, and this stretch of tarmac will go back to carrying commuters and delivery vans.

Tired, sunburnt, almost drunk by the whole experience. I try to recreate those seconds. Yet, I suppose the Tour probably isn’t meant to be captured, only witnessed. It arrives, it compels, it departs. And you’re left standing on the roadside, slightly bewildered, completely changed, already planning your return.

My ferry departs that same evening, I am thrusted back to reality, I sit on the platform at Fratton station, waiting for the train to carry me and my bike back to London. There’s no space for my bike on the first few trains that come through, the man on the platform tells me I shouldn’t even have “that thing” on trains “really.” The continental inflection has already faded, the tan lines will follow.