Stage 6 Arras / Reims - The Turn of the Screw

After yesterday’s epic battle on the cobbles, the Tour continued to pay tribute to the centenary of the beginning of World War I with a 194km stage from Arras through the Plains of the Somme and on to one of the champagne production centres of the region Reims. The terrain is pancake flat with just 2 category 4 climbs and an intermediate sprint at the 119km mark.

Since the race was heading to the Champagne region Gabriel Gate had something special planned, Chicken with Champagne and Mushroom Sauce. Not too many wild chickens in the north of France, so Gabs did what any one else would do and filled up a trolley down at the local supermarché. No butter in this recipe, the only dairy to speak of is a half cup of cream. However, what it lacks in dairy is more than made up for in booze with a little cognac and half a bottle of champagne for the dish and the rest for chef. The Beurremetric Counter sits on a tipsy 375g.

This route was designed with the sprinter in mind but not the Tour fan. Let’s be honest, this was a pretty boring stage on mostly flat fields with not a lot to see. Phil and Paul did manage to occupy themselves with some occasional  chateau and medieval ruin spotting but quickly got tired of it. And you know Paul is really bored when he starts talking about fishing. There were no bird spotting opportunities for Phil either. At times like this you wish Tour organisers would keep a buzzard on standby to release just to keep him occupied.

Boredom can be the enemy of the rider too leading to inattention. Conditions were moist but there were a lot of silly crashes on good straight roads resulting in more race abandons than on the cobbles the day before. Paul put it down to reactions to ‘strange noises’ causing riders to touch on the brakes and skid on the road. And the source of these strange noises? Well, Troll DJ gave us a clue with the theme to ‘Blazing Saddles’.

Speaking of wind, the cross winds over the fields caused some havoc in the peloton. And if cross winds weren’t enough, there were nine sectors of roundabouts to deal with on the run in to Reims.

Mega Farmer-Quick Stop ‘put the hammer down and turned up the screws’ in the final kilometres. ‘Hammers down’, ‘screws turned up’, classic  Sherwenisms. However, if these expressions are indicative of Paul’s handyman skills there’s no way I’m letting him do work around my chateau.

Marcel Kittel (Giant-Shimano) was highly fancied to win the stage and in the final sprint to the line punctured along with Trekie Danny Van Poppel, whose tyre, well, popped.  A repeat of stage 14’s ‘tackgate’ in 2012? No, it turns out the screws were turned up so high they fell out and ended up all over the road.

It was Andre Greipel’s (Lotto-Belisol) time to shine as he appeared out of nowhere to take the stage. Vincenzo Nibali (Asstana) hangs on to yellow and Peter Sagan (Cannonball) looked bored on the podium accepting another green jersey. Will we see him pop a wheelie on the line in Nancy?

Stage 4 Le Touquet-Paris-Plage / Lille Métropole - The Ministry for Pulling Faces

The Tour bid farewell to a magnificent three days in Britain and the challenge now was how to cross the English Channel to the race back home on French soil.

Last year’s transfer from Corsica to the French mainland saw the riders commandeer every available flying dinghy. No such luck for the riders this time. Swimming the channel covered in pig fat in freezing cold water with a bike strapped to one’s back wasn’t exactly appealing. Fortunately there’s a rail tunnel under the Channel. It was a bumpy ride over 50km of railway sleepers but many riders saw it as good training for the cobbles of stage five.

After three days in Britain the riders were well and truly sick of a diet of Yorkshire pudding, deep fried Mars Bars and flat beer. Gabriel Gate had just the thing waiting as the peloton emerged from the Chunnel - Scallop Mousse with Prawn Sauce. This delicate dish contains no butter in the actual recipe but is saved by the four buttered soufflé moulds. Now you’d want to do this properly, so I’d go for a whole 250g block. This takes the Beurremetric Counter to a healthy 350g.

But it must be remembered the riders are here for a bike race and the day’s 163.5km stage took the riders from the coastal resort town of Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, a popular playground with water sports enthusiasts, to Lille Metropole.

Trekie Andy Schleck was forced to abandon the Tour due that tumble in London the day before involving a spectator trying to take a picture. Some 2.5m spectators came out to watch the Tour’s three days in the UK. Fantastic for Tour organisers but was that too many for the riders? Well, you can’t legislate against the stupidity of spectators but then again we wouldn’t want to see dry stone wall barriers for every future Tour event held in the British Isles – the endless dry stone wall blather from Phil and Paul would just be too much!

Chris Froome (Sky) managed to chute in the first couple of kilometers but Frenchman Thomas Voeckler (Oooooropecar) broke free from the peloton ‘pumping and blowing’, according to Phil. He had a one and half minute lead at one stage until he was caught on the outskirts of Lille. ‘The Ministry for Pulling Faces’ is renowned for his solo breakaways in France, not for national pride but for TV exposure for the team sponsors.

Voeckler smiles for the cameras

Again, this was another day for the sprinters. Alexander Kristoff (Katusha Rocket) gave it a shake but Marcel Kittel (Giant-Shimano) proved too good again making it stage victory number three.

Everyone’s attention has turned to stage five on the cobbles. Cobbles are like a horizontal dry stone walls when you think about it. Phil and Paul are going to be insufferable.

Stage 3 Cambridge / Londres - London Calling

Day three and it’s the final stage on British soil before the Tour caravan crosses the English Channel for France. At 155km this ‘transitional stage’ is one of the shortest in this year’s Tour. The route was best described as pancake flat or at least considerably flatter than the so-called flat stage we saw in Yorkshire on Saturday. I always wonder about the phrase ‘pancake flat’. Obviously no one’s seen my attempts at making them.

In honour of the memory of the now defunct Euskaltel-Euskadi team, Gabriel Gate prepared a quintessential English dish of Steak and Kidney Casserole with Carrots. The absence of butter was a little disappointing and the Beurremetric Counter sits on 100g.

After a jaunt through the Essex countryside and with The Clash’s ‘London Calling’ blasting out over race radio, the peloton reached the edge of Greater London. By the time the riders hit the centre of London the race started to resemble more of a City Sightseeing bus stage than a transitional one.

Riders passed Olympic Park and Paul claimed to have met people who have actually swum in the pool of the Olympic Aquatic Centre. Well blow me down, we were all thinking it was only for show or frozen over for ‘Disney on Ice’ gigs on the school holidays.

The famous gherkin and City Hall ‘glass onion’ (or testicle, depending on your imagine) loomed into view before the peloton continued on past other landmarks such as the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London before a sprint on The Mall to the finish at Buckingham Palace.

Good thing the council put down that horse anti-slip coating for cavalry parades on The Mall because typical of London, it started to rain. So long as the riders could stay away from the ‘death-traps’ of white line markings and horse poo they knew that’d be safe.

Short of putting up dry stone wall barriers, not much could be done about  keeping spectators off the road. All it takes is one berk with a Brownie box camera to step out on the road and get clipped, which is exactly what happened at around 30km to go. David Lopez (Sky) sent the Brownie flying and several riders went down. Trekie Andy Schleck, some metres from the downed riders, insisted the spectator had nothing to do with his chute and that the bike inexplicably threw itself to the ground with him on it.

#selfie

  

Marcel Kittel (Giant-Shimano), Andre Greipel (Lotto-Belisol) and Peter Sagan (Cannonball) were all expected to duke it out on for line honours. Somewhere Greipel went missing in action and Kittel came thundering down The Mall like a Mack truck and was too good for Sagan by a bike length.

Vincenzo Nibali (Asstana) gets to wear yellow for the Tour’s resumption on French soil.

Stage 6 Aix-en-Provence / Montpellier – A state of nervousness

Today’s stage from Aix-en-Provence to Montpellier can be summed up in the words of Paul Sherwin as windy and nervous. These were about the only things on his mind today. For some such as Bouhanni (from French team All the Way with FDJ) it was all too much forcing an abandon of the great race.
 

It’s been five days of hard slog. You can forgive the riders for starting to find it just that little bit harder getting out of the cot in the morning. There’s nothing like a corpse-reviving-double-shot-strength espresso for petit déjeuner to get you going for the day.

All that coffee may explain (or perhaps the lack of butter in Gabriel Gate’s Salade de Cerises au Marc de Languedoc or cherry fruit salad with Languedoc brandy) all that nervous energy in the peloton as they took to a blustery parcours that skirts the Camargue which, as Phil Liggett loves to point out, is famous for its wild horses and pink flamingos.

 

 

 

A famous pink flamingo

 

The peloton gallantly fought the cross winds employing the oldest survival tactic in the book, the echelon. The Dutch and Belgians are very good at this riding technique coming from the flat empty wind swept lands of the north. What the wind was cross about was never determined. Did it get up on the wrong side of the bed? Or perhaps it was just nervous and nervous wind is the worst kind of wind.

But the nervousness didn’t end there. The fields and limestone outcrops looked nervous. Even the acrobatic Camargue bulls, smaller than their Spanish cousins, looked nervous.

We finally put the finger on the cause of this universal state of nervousness. It was Paul’s endless descriptions of nervousness that got on everyone’s nerves in the end.

However, the nerves soon evaporated at dash for the finish line in Montpellier. I suspect some riders may have discarded the cherries from Gabriel's special treat and stashed the brandy in their bidons for the run home.

The finish saw Greipel and Sagan skittle Kittel. Lady luck continues to smile for Orica-GreenWEDGE with the team's Daryl Impey becoming the first African to slip on yellow. We won’t hear the end of it from the Ps now...

Now that we are at the gateway to le weekend, I’ll leave you with a Friday fun fact; Did you know there’s a large urban habitation dedicated to making energy drinks for riders? It’s called the For Bidon City.