Elodie's birthday - Tour de France, Col du Grande Columbier

This morning I woke up and I realised that it was my birthday!!! I was so excited but we had to get up straight away as we were going to the Tour de France!!!!!!!! The Tour de France is a cycling race that goes for three weeks all over France. As you may have heard on the news that the winner of last year was Cadel Evans who of course we were barracking for!!!!!

We got dressed and headed to the car. Then had a quick look out the window to see if our friends Ben and Lavina were there because they were coming with us to the Tour. They were there so we went to the lift to go to the parking.We headed off to TDF stage 10 Macon to Bellegard de Valserine. We left Annecy at about 6.30am for the 1 hour drive.

We drove to Culoz via Aix Les Bain (a postcard beautiful lake – we drove about 6km along the very lake edge toward Culoz). From Culoz we drove 4km up Col du Grande Columbier and then walked an extra 1km to get the perfect spot. (Some say Grande Columbier is the nastiest mountain in France for bike riders – Dad and Ben walked an extra few kms up, then came back, Dad said what they saw confirmed that that was indeed one nasty mountain – at one stage there were about 8 to 10 switchbacks in succession at >12-14% with no straights in between – narrow roads with vertical walls either side – people were sitting above looking down on the switchbacks - like a natural amphitheatre).  

I think we got the perfect spot though (we didn’t think Cadel and others would take Wiggins on today so we weren’t concerned about going any further up the mountain). We were on a bend on a grade of about 12% with a straight leading up to it of about 200m. We were on the outside of the road on a cliff with 270 degree views around the mountains and lake and Rhone River and Culoz below. We were effectively perched on a ledge and it was a perfect spot to watch firstly the “Caravan” and then the cyclists zig zag through the town below and then ride up to us and around the bend.

We had a patch on a ledge where we set up our camp, our big aussie flag waving horizontal in a nice cooling breeze; we had a picnic (chicken, ham, coke, French wine etc), rested and some had a sleep in the sun, took endless pics of breathtaking scenery, pics of people walking past and endless conversations with passing aussies (by far the biggest country representation) and some wanna be aussies.  I opened my presents and I got a bookmark with my name on it, a notepad with my name on it, some converse shoes and a band. We had a magnificent view. The mountains were humungous and the river was spectacular. Some of the mountains were a luscious green and some of them had a rocky top with either snow or white rock. Some Aussies came past and asked if they could camp with us for the day. Of course we said yes so we started an Aussie corner!!!!! Some people said you could see the flag on the bend from a km away as they were walking up. People stopped for pics with us and the flag and many long conversations.

We had a snack and then the “caravan” rolled through at about 1.30pm and went for about 45 mins chucking out freebies. The caravan is a parade of sponsor cars that give freebies out to the crowd. There are different varietys of caravans such as Haribo, XTRA dishwashing liquid, Nesquick, newspapers and many, many, many more!! The best thing was we all managed to score a polka dot king of the mountain jersey.  After a lot lot of pushing, shoving and freebies we had lunch and then waited for a while for the riders to come past.

Then the cyclists came through Culoz and we watched first the breakaway then after 5 mins the main peleton ride through the streets directly but way below. An aerial view. We then caught glimpses of them as they weaved their way up the mountain toward us.

Then they rode up the 200 metre“shute” straight toward us and the crowd erupted. We had the perfect spot – we got pics and video and saw all the riders as they ground their way past us, nice and slow. After watching all those stages on TV, and to be there on a mountain stage of the TDF, blew us away. That was an exhilarating experience. We had a ball. We saw Cadel Evans and cheered him on as loud as we could!!

On the way home we stopped at Aix Les Bains to have crepes instead of birthday cake, why not have traditional crepes in France???

When we got back to the apartment in Annecy we discovered that the TDF caravan was staying at our apartment complex overnight. Better still the TDF team buses rocked up with all the bikes and bike mechanics working on all the bikes. We watched team SKY wash down, tweak and clean all the bikes.

I had the best birthday ever and an awesome day in the French Alps!!!!!

Love Elodie and the TDF gang.

A selection of pictures below......