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Seeing the Tour De France (July 2023)

It was a short drive from Annecy to Courcheval. We were happy to find the free motorhome parking site in the centre of town still had plenty of spaces. We found ourselves parked up in a row of English vehicles, and their owners filled us in with the information they’d found out on where to watch the tour and use of the cable cars.

It was a beautiful day, so we decided to take our bikes up on the cable car and cycle part of the official Tour route – this was the Queens Stage of this year’s Tour covering a challenging 165.7 km route from Saint Gervais to the ski resort of Courchevel. The final leg of the race included a grueling 28.4 km ascent up the Col de la Loze (2304m), followed by a sweeping downhill towards the finish line with a sting in the tail up a steep runway to the finish line. We took our bikes up on two cable cars to the other side of the Col de la Loze. Colin wanted to cycle to the finish line first, then back up to the Col de la Loze summit (doing it the other way round to the riders). Having seen the profile of the ride I was pretty sure I’d be pushing my bike most of the 5km up, and I left Colin to it when he headed to the finish line that would add another 2 or 3 km of climbing back to the cable car station.

Good decision – when Colin appeared half an hour later, he could barely speak with the exertion and said the runway section was one of the hardest hills he’d ever tackled – just 350m but with a maximum gradient of 18% – it looks nothing when you watch it on telly. There were lots of other cyclists doing what we were – the sensible ones on e-bikes.


My prediction was correct - I did push more of the 5km up than cycle, but the views were spectacular and the promise of 12km downhill back to Courcheval kept me going. The downhill was nearly as tortuous though for someone who isn’t a reckless speed merchant, and regular stops were required to unlock fingers that had cramped up gripping the brakes so hard. It was a relief when we finally made it back to Courcheval.



We paused to watch some people ski jumping in Courcheval Le Praz. I winced at Colin’s lack of tact when he told one of them they are ‘stupid’. They looked a little taken aback, but then countered by telling Colin that he was the stupid one for cycling around here! When Colin recounted this to a Norwegian guy who was parked next to us he said he concurred with the ski jumper then casually mentioned that he used to represent Norway in the sport and used to train here regularly. On reflection it probably wasn’t very sensible to do this bike ride without acclimatising to the altitude for a couple of days, but we’re glad we did it.


The following day we caught a cable car up to a different point without the bikes this time, to admire the far-reaching peaks of the Alps and have a walk around.

We took ourselves back up to Col De La Loze on the day of the Tour. We got ourselves a spot on the edge of a steep banking in the hope that no one tall could come and stand in front of us, as they had in the Tour De Yorkshire in 2014. It was already heaving with spectators with over 4 hours to go, but time passed by quickly with so much going on – there were a lot of cyclists doing the route pre the actual race and the crowds cheered them on as they conquered the final climb to the summit. Then the caravan came through where the sponsors throw out freebies of t-shirts, caps, food items etc to the clambering crowds. To be honest we don’t enjoy this bit as people literally push and shove to get a freebie. We weren’t in a good position to catch anything, but someone who’d already got about 5 hats threw Colin one, and an English couple camping near us in the car park very kindly gave me a spare t-shirt.


The riders were pretty strung out due to the severity of the route, so the leaders came through in dribs and drabs. There was a large screen up near us so we could see the TV coverage as well. As we started walking back down to the cable car to head back into town the back marker groups ( cycling term -the autobus ) were still coming down.

The following day the tour was starting in Moutiers which is just a few kms downhill from Courcheval. With no public transport running between the two towns in the morning we packed up Lo11y and set off and were lucky to find some parking just a 10 minute walk from the town centre. It was very crowded around the start line, but once the caravan had gone through lots of people moved off and left us with a prime position to watch the start.The teams all have to parade on a stage and be interviewed before the race, which we’re sure is the last thing they want to do while getting psyched up for a tough day’s riding. The stage was 184.9 lumpy kms, after yesterday’s mammoth climbing stage.Vingegaard looked cool and focused on the line in the yellow jersey.

After they’d departed, we headed straight out of town, heading North with 3 days until our ferry back to the UK. We saw glimpses of the riders at various stages for the first hour.





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