the French buy daily to accompany their meals. You can also buy sweet breakfast rolls like croissants, brioches and pains au chocolat, as well as cakes, flans, pizza slices and quiches in some boulangerie shops. On Mondays this may well be the only shop open in a village. Buy a baguette or two and then pop over to the charcuterie, which sells cooked meats, pâtés and sausages. Follow this with a visit to the alimentation or épicerie for cheeses and salad (there may even be a fromagerie, a cheese shop, if you are in a larger settlement), and you have all the ingredients for a cheap, delicious picnic at a roadside aire (a grassy or wooded area with picnic tables) after your morning's cycling. Otherwise, lunch can be taken in a village café or brasserie fairly cheaply; the croque monsieur (toasted cheese and ham sandwich) is nearly always on the menu, as is steak haché avec frites (steak and chips), served with salad or vegetables. There is usually a vegetarian dish or two, and crêpes (rolled pancakes with a choice of fillings) may also be on offer. A buckwheat variety of crêpe called galette is very tasty and is particularly popular in Brittany. The plat du jour (dish of the day) or menu touristique are set meals that can be tasty or bland depending on the establishment or the chef's imagination, and usually appear on a restaurant's menu too. If you decide to eat lunch at a restaurant why not be a little more adventurous and choose something with a local twist. Restaurants are only open for lunch or dinner, whereas cafés, brasseries and bars are open all day and will normally serve food throughout the afternoon. If you are running low on water and the shops are shut you can buy bottled water here too, but it won't be cheap.
Supermarkets are plentiful. In towns and villages you will find a Casino, Huit-à-huit or Coccinelle, mini-supermarkets selling fruit, vegetables, salad, tinned food, water, wine, beer, soft drinks and packaged meat slices and cheese. Unlike bigger supermarkets there are no cheese or meat counters, only shelf items. Intermarché and Ecomarché supermarkets are larger and are usually found in the suburbs of towns or on a main road just outside big villages; they have bread, meat and cheese counters that also offer local produce. Some also sell maps, CDs and other such items. Bigger still are the hypermarkets such as LeClerc found on the outskirts of large towns and in cities which sell everything imaginable, most importantly basic bicycle accessories, tools, inner tubes, and so on. Most supermarkets, regardless of size, are open from 8.30am to 12.30pm and 3pm to 7.30pm, Monday to Saturday (although some are not open on Monday mornings, or not at all on Mondays). Many are open on Sundays from 8.30am to 12 noon. Many big supermarkets, on the whole, do not close for lunch.
Small villages may just have an alimentation which caters for all basic needs regarding food and drink. Although most items are a little more expensive than in supermarkets, these tiny shops are very useful when you might be camping in the middle of nowhere, or need to pick up something for lunch on the road. Generally speaking, if a village has a church it will invariably have an alimentation, boulangerie and probably a boucherie (butcher's shop).
Finally, if you have a sweet tooth or are feeling ‘bonky’ (when blood-sugar levels fall too low and you feel weak and wobbly), there's the pâtisserie shop that sells a delicious, colourful array of cakes, flans and tarts. I will never forget feeling bonky once in the Limousin region and finding a pâtisserie open in Bourganeuf – on a Sunday afternoon! Marvellous.
See the maps marking several regional specialities and major wine regions of mainland France in Appendix D. A brief description of each speciality and wine region is also given.
Greg Lemond and Rob Harmeling (TVM/143), Tour de France 1991
The Tour de France
The first Tour de France – the world's greatest bicycle race – took place in 1903. Created by Henri Desgrange, the editor of L'Auto, and George Lefèvre, the rugby and cycling reporter, to help publicise and improve circulation of this sports newspaper, the first event was a six-stage race covering 2428km. The riders left Paris for Lyon, then cycled on to Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes, and finally back to Paris. The average stage distance was 405km, which meant the competitors had to cycle nights as well as days! They also had to carry out their own repairs if necessary.
Maurice Garin won that first Tour in front of 20,000 Parisiens, and L'Auto's circulation quadrupled, heralding the birth of something very special. Yet the following year's Tour was almost the last, with many riders cheating by catching trains on occasion and even sabotaging each other's bicycles. Fortunately the organisers decided to stage the race again in 1905 with more concrete rules and they introduced the first mountain stage, the Ballon d'Alsace. Desgrange added a stage through the Pyrénées in 1910, and one in the Alps a year later. By now the Tour had more than doubled in overall distance and number of stages, but the average stage distance was still frighteningly long at 356km.
Immediately after World War I Desgrange introduced the yellow jersey (maillot jaune). He chose this colour for two reasons: the roadside spectators could pick out the race leader easily and, perhaps more significantly, L'Auto was printed on yellow paper. Eugene Christophe was the first man to don the yellow jersey on 18 July 1919. The first Italian to win the Tour – previously dominated by the French and Belgians – was Ottavio Bottecchia in 1924. He notched up another victory the following year. The longest-ever race in Tour history took place in 1926, covering a total distance of 5745km. Such monstrous rides had become a thing of the past by the early 1930s when the Tour was opened to other advertisers, coverage was broadcasted live on the radio, and French riders won the race six years in a row.
Laurent Fignon in the Tour de France 1991
In 1937 the first derailleurs were allowed in the Tour de France. A year later the Italian cyclist Gino Bartali won the Tour, then won it again 10 years later in 1948 at the age of 34. Bartali was physically assaulted on the Col d'Aspin in the Tour of 1950, but went on to win the stage before he and his Italian team-mates (including Fausto Coppi, the 1949 victor) withdrew in protest.
Two of the toughest climbs of the Tour de France were introduced in the early 1950s: Mont Ventoux in 1951 and l'Alpe d'Huez in 1952. Coppi won the first historic stage of l'Alpe d'Huez, and then went on to win the Tour that year. French riders, including Louison Bobet and Jacques Anquetil, dominated the next five Tours, and the great Spanish climber Federico Bahamontes won the 1959 event. Anquetil went on to win four consecutive Tours between 1961 and 1964, becoming the first of only five riders to notch up more than three victories to date. The Tour's second tragic fatality occurred in 1967 when Tom Simpson collapsed near the summit of Mont Ventoux; Francesco Capeda had died on the Galibier in 1935.
The Belgian Eddy Merckx became the second man to win five Tours (1969, 1970, 1971, 1972 and 1974), subsequently matched by Bernard Hinault (1978, 1979, 1981, 1982 and 1985). Laurent Fignon, winner of two Tours, and Greg Lemond, the first American to win a Tour in 1986, battled against each other for victory in Paris in 1989. It came down to the final time-trial in the capital, which Lemond famously won by the slimmest of margins in the history of the Tour de France: 8 seconds!
The early 1990s belonged to one man in particular, Miguel Indurain. He won five Tours in a row from 1991 and 1995 and, like Lemond, was strong in all disciplines. During his reign another American was emerging; Lance Armstrong won a stage in the 1993 and 1995 Tours. Diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1996, Armstrong was given a slim chance of living, since it had also spread to various parts of his body and brain. Following an operation and painful chemotherapy, he fought back with a vengeance and won the 1999 Tour de France. He never looked back, joined the élite club of Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault and Indurain by winning five Tours… and then went two better.
About the Bike
Which bicycle is best for touring?
A touring bike is the obvious answer as it
