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.