Mistakes I Made While Visiting the Tour de France

by Sophie She

Mistakes I Made While Visiting the Tour de France

16 Jul 2024

Photo: Árni Svanur Daníelsson

First of all, let’s start with — What is the Tour de France? If you don’t know the answer to this question — please read this article. And in order to be stylish and use some cool words — have a look at this one; you will find a complete dictionary there that you can always use.

What is Le Tour?

Tour de France (TDF) is like the Met Gala of cycling, being one of the three major cycling events in the world, and having the best PR, I would say. To put it simply, TDF (aka Le Tour), is a month-long cycling race, where the crème de la crème athletes compete with each other.

As cycling slowly conquers the world with its stylishness and good coffee, Le Tour becomes increasingly popular. It offers not only a celebrity-seeing experience but also lots of travel and good vibes.

Visiting Le Tour Online

What you need to know is that watching TDF is pretty challenging if you don’t have cab;e, as they have contracts mostly with TV people. But there are still some ways to follow the challenge — Le Tour has a great website, where you can see progress (UAE Team Emirates is achieving the leaderboard). There, sports geeks can binge on the races and the athletes to get a bit extra content and stay in touch with the progress.

This piece would also help to get the most iconic team of the season.

Where'd You Go, Sophie?

Finally falling in love with the cycling culture in Dubai (thanks to my husband and his friends), visiting TDF was an obvious plan. We simply had to go, because I had to see with my own eyes that Tadej Pogačar can actually go 30 km/hour bare legs up the hill! Can you imagine, I saw a person riding a bike like it was a motorcycle? He literally climbed the mountain with his own physical pace of 30 km/hour going upwards... Yes, he is the best cyclist in the world today, and it was fascinating.

So, I went to see stages 14 and 15 of Le Tour and it was one of the most exciting things of this summer. The stages took place in the area in between France and Spain, which is super fun as people don’t really speak English there, but they speak both French and Spanish. Thanks god, I have had a Spanish Duolingo for some time and our Valencian Senior Editor Alejandra Mansilla, as otherwise the communication would be a challenge.

The views… Oh, the views... Nature is absolutely stunning! But be prepared to enjoy these scenes only with bread and other carbs, as apparently, the population of South France worships only gluten, as it is pretty hard to find anything but the bakery or pizzerias on the road. I must mention, though, that we travelled there during the weekend, and as we all know, Europe doesn’t have a habit of things working on Saturdays and Sundays, and Le Tour timing was no different.

How to Le Tour?

So, first off, you prep. You prep food, you prep water, you prep book and stuff to do on the road because it is a road trip and you will be driving or being car sick most of the time. Then, you prepare your clothes. It is freezingly cold in the French mountains during the evening time. Although daytime temperatures are about 22–27 degrees, in the evening, I almost froze my tush off, and my husband caught a cold. So, please pack some medicine with you.

Food and beverages are also essential because it is often that you arrive at the next location during non-working hours, and you are not Tadej Pogačar to ask the local cafe for food when they are off duty. Spoiler — if you will, you won’t get it, they will close, and you will go to sleep hungry. And we don’t want that, so stack up some protein bars, some protein milkshakes (anything with protein, tbh, as it is easy to digest and very fulfilling), and some complex carbs would be great, as well as some cut veggies and fruits or berries.

Another important preparation is the road, of course. Here you can find the map of Le Tour and this will help you plan your route. Choose a stage you would like to see, then book a hotel (don’t leave it last minute, as there won’t be any room and nothing works during the night time), and stay in touch with online maps, as French authorities will close the roads eventually and you will need to know in advance which and where not to get stuck (as I did).

Also, each stay consists of the start and finale, which are the most important parts. They are always in different towns, so you will need to choose which one you want to see and thus choose your destination.

Stage 14

I loved that day. We arrived the day before, had a wonderful dinner, wandered around the village for a bit, and went to our hotel in the mountains, enjoying the view, the cows, and some warm tea. Oh, and we almost became homeless because we forgot to confirm our stay via phone, so do that and be better than me.

But yeah, we were all prepared, so on the day of the event, we had a 20-minute drive to the city, where the finish was. We parked our car and waited in a 20-minute queue at the bakery to have something to eat and to buy something for the hike (we went up the mountain to stand on the road as you could see people in the air). After we stuffed our faces with baguettes and coffee, we began our hike, which took us around three hours.

On the go, we chatted with people, had some food offered to us (like chocolates and jamon), made some friends, saw the best views, and saw some teams’ buses that went up the mountain to the finish area. Eventually, we chose a spot between the final 3d and 2nd kilometres of the route and just chilled there for about two hours. This activity requires lots of waiting, so choose your companion wisely.

There was some entertainment, provided by the partners of the event. Namingly, the partner-branded cars went throughout the road several times and they scattered gifts at the people, standing on the sides of the roads. It was fun when it was Haribo, but then I also caught a laundry detergent and it became kind of weird... But still, it is nice to have some action before the action.

Pro-tip — find an online commentator to follow the peloton not to miss legends’ appearance.

We did this, and thus we knew exactly when to get excited about the star of the UAE Team Emirates cycling in front of us.

And so, he came. Man, this was awesome! Everyone cheered and screamed, supporting Tadej Pogačar. He was so fast, riding that mountain, it was almost unbelievable. And it was the end of the 100+ km route! Tadej sprinted like a rocket, and after several seconds, there was his main competitor — Jonas Vingegaard, flying second.

Then, Adam Yayets from the UAE Team Emirates and Ben Healy, the star of the EF Education — Easypost team, cycled, and later, the rest of the peloton followed. Athletes smiled, laughed, didn’t shy about their struggles, and even played with the crowd, coordinating our waves and other fun movements.

So, after the majority of the stars passed, we decided to go to the finish and stare at our cycling heroes while they gave comments to journalists in front of their team’s buses. Of course, there were crazy crowds, but we managed to see many iconic bikes and enjoy some views, also awarding Tadej Pogačar with podium applause.

As the crowds grew bigger, and so did the funicular queue, we decided to walk back and enjoyed a wonderful track, going down the mountain.

Then we were stuck, exiting the city, as we had to wait until all the team;s buses (22 to be sure) left the town and the roads were open again, so we reached the second location at around 1 o’clock in the morning.

And what a lovely day it was!!

Stage 15

This one will be short. Briefly put, we missed the time when roads were open, went to see the start of the stage and got stuck at the mountain, though with some visibility of the route. Then we had 20-30 minutes of happiness when the peloton came, and Tadej Pogačar even attacked the peloton, breaking away from everyone, which was awesome.

Then we decided to follow the route and go to the end of the stage and got bamboozled with the roads again, ending up stuck in the middle of nowhere, as everything around us was blocked by police, and we spent most of our day like this, waiting for the road to open. Eventually, we decided to have a short river swim and enjoy the finale on air, then going back to Spain, where we came from,

To sum up, we spent around 13–15 hours in the car, saw about 20 minutes of the road and had x3 pizza that day, getting home at around 2 o’clock in the morning.

Do’s and Don’ts

Do take as much food and water as you can

Do have lots of clothes to change

Do carry cash with you (max 50 eur)

Do have a playlist for car

Do pack your shampoo, gel, and conditioner (mountain hotels have nothing)

Do poach extra chargers and car-friendly things

Do confirm your stays at mountain hotels via phone and via Booking.com

Don’t follow the route, you will get stuck

Don’t pack only summer clothes

Don’t underestimate your car sickness and car boredom

Don’t go to the start of the stage after 8 am

Don’t be an obstacle for the riders

And finally, Do have some fun and Do take your friends.

by Sophie She