in the panniers’ (yep, thanks, Graham, I noticed): ‘A bicycle unrolls a 360-degree panorama of the land, allows the rider to register its gradual changes in gear ratios and muscle tension, and makes it hard to miss a single inch of it, from the tyre-lacerating suburbs of Paris to the Mistral-blasted plains of Provence.’
A cyclist can embrace the leisurely passage of time on the smaller roads, weaving as they do through hamlets on the way to nowhere, past tumbledown chateaux and fields of somnambulant cattle, and then stop for refreshments in a prosperous little town, watching the world go by at some bustling café in the soothing company of small dogs.
A bike also, of course, offers a unique opportunity to plod miserably through Zone Industrielles in the rain, and dodge lorries on a road that turns out to be bigger and scarier than Google Maps is prepared to admit, to say nothing of the ever-present and exciting possibility of eating lunch outside a Total garage because nowhere else will let you in dressed like that. They’re pretty good at both highs and lows, bikes, and that’s what makes them fun. I can’t wait.
Robb describes the actual Tour de France as ‘a joyful beating of the bounds that millions of people with no interest in sport still enjoy every summer’. Mine feels rather like that, too: a way to see how the country fits together, how the Wild West of craggy Atlantic granite and wide ocean beaches becomes the south-west of duck fat and complicated Basque consonants, to get a feeling for the state of regional French cooking, so long lauded around the world, yet as vulnerable to the very 21st-century pressures of time and convenience as anywhere else.
Is it still possible, I wonder, to find roadside places full of what the redoubtable Fanny Cradock described as ‘heavily tattooed, burly camion drivers … where the soap is attached to a string in the communal loo and the tablecloths may be of paper, but where an excellent five-course meal can be found for well under a pound’? Will I eat better in France than I would at home, and come back two stone heavier, with incipient scurvy?
My tour will have several, not insignificant diversions from its more famous namesake. For a start, as described above in luxuriant detail, my route is going to be based solely around the greatest hits of French cuisine, rather than its landscapes and local politics. Secondly, though there will be a rag-tag peloton for the most scenic bits, I’ll be mostly on my own, as it seems most of my friends, very inconsiderately, have proper jobs that preclude going away for five weeks. Thirdly, I’m going to have to lug everything with me, including a tent and sleeping bag, to leave me more to spend on food (pro teams sleep in hotels where they don’t even carry their bags upstairs themselves). And lastly … I’m a 35-year-old food writer who spends most of her working week testing recipes – and when I say testing, I mean eating them all up and licking the plate while the dog looks on with jealous eyes. Tour riders start off with about 4–5 per cent body fat. I suspect mine, though mercilessly unmeasured, is more akin to a pot of clotted cream.
The problem with this last point, of course, is that it means my power-to-weight ratio – that most vital of statistics in modern sport – is sub-optimal. I’m going to be hauling a lot of unnecessary baggage round France, which is unfortunate when, according to British Cycling, ‘one of the best ways to get quicker on the bike, especially on hills, is to drop a few pounds’. I have a go, I really do, but there’s the small matter of six weeks’ worth of recipes to write and perfect before I go, and eventually I concede defeat, which is unfortunate, because the rather chi-chi cycling outfitters Café du Cycliste, based in Nice but with a smart little shop in East London, are kind enough to step in at the last minute with the offer of some gear. I’m not quite sure that I’m exactly the clothes horse they had in mind to sport the two elegant outfits they’ve picked out. ‘Does … does this come in large?’ I ask tentatively, stepping from the changing room in something so skintight you’d be able to count my ribs if they hadn’t disappeared some time in the late 1980s.
More pressingly, I don’t have a proper bike. My last true love was trashed by couriers on the way back from Marseille last summer and my first reserve, the Pashley, which weighs over 20kg even without a dog on board, is clearly not up to the task. I seek expert advice from friends like Rich, who’s into long, long rides and recommends various bikes that are eminently practical and reasonably priced, Jon, who’s into spending money on really sexy-looking bikes, and Max, who’s into cycling up mountains with the minimum of kit, and then I ignore it all in favour of one that makes my heart flutter when I look at it, and my accountant weep, despite my parents’ generous contribution in lieu of all future Christmas and birthday gifts.
Eddy (named for the pastry-loving Merckx) is a steel-framed (more flexible than aluminium on bumpy terrain, less risky than the pricy but delicate carbon frames used by the pros) Condor touring bike in Paris Green, a colour which feels auspicious. I spend an expensive afternoon in a basement on the Grays Inn Road being measured up (‘your arms are … really long’) and then a nervous month praying he will be ready in time for the off after discovering belatedly that delivery is scheduled for around the time I should be in the Loire Valley.
Fortunately, after I look ready to burst into tears in front of other customers, they manage to hurry things along and he arrives a week before the off, a thing of rare and lustrous beauty, though unfortunately I’m so hungover after a work party the night before that I fail to listen when they explain technical points about how to trim the chain, on the basis I have no idea what this means and am in no state to learn. Instead, I have a vivid flashback to telling a completely sober Nigel Slater that I loved him, over and over, and clench my fists around the handlebars in hot shame.
So I’ve got the bike and the kit and the rudimentary vocab, having enrolled in a panic cramming course at the French Institute in South Kensington and ploughed my way through various Inspector Maigret mysteries instead of packing. This at least means I’ll be able to discuss murder weapons with confidence on my journey, if required.
Yet such is the rush before I go that I don’t quite make time to check if all my gear will fit in my new bright yellow panniers. Sitting in the corner of the bedroom gathering dust, they look vast in comparison with the one I’ve used previously, yet I have a sneaking suspicion that once I’ve included important morale-boosting items like Marmite and sloe gin, there might not be an awful lot of room for luxuries like spare inner tubes and plasters.
Naturally, instead of dealing with the problem, I insist on throwing a Royal Wedding Party for the nuptials of Harry and Meghan, to the evident dismay of my friends, who nevertheless come and support me, because that’s what friends do. Gemma even brings me a tiny bottle of Echo Falls rosé to stick in my panniers.
‘I’m really looking forward to it,’ says Matt, who is accompanying me for the first few days and claims he’s ‘all sorted’, as the three of us – the last survivors of the Happy Event – sit outside the pub at dusk, drinking snakebite and black (it seemed funny when I ordered them).
I giddily watch the dog begging for crisps on the other side of the bar, and vaguely wonder who he belongs to. ‘Yeah, me too,’ I say. ‘Do you think I should go home and pack?’
* With the exception of breakfast, picnic food and cakes, all of which I reckon the UK has the edge on.
† Don’t get me started on the iniquities of the Women’s Tour.
STAGE 1
