Lee's Ramblings

Tour de France 2011 - possible non starter?

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 15:40:10 +0100

Looks like this year could be a Tour de France free year again this year. Mustn't make a habit of it.

The main problem is trying to fit in when I can visit with the Tour's route with my work schedule and whether the towns are served by train.

This year, I'm scuppered, especially that the Grand Depart is in Britanny and their rail service isn't the best...

The possible days I can visit are

Stage 10 - Tue 12 July. Aurillac - Carmaux. Rail engineering work means that it's a 2 hour bus ride from Toulouse. Not a major problem in itself, but when the rest of the region is trying to get to the event...
Stage 11 - Wed 13 July. Blaye-les-Mines - Lavaur. Same as above
Stage 12 - Thu 14 July. Cugnaux - Luz Ardiden. Local town doesn't know yet what bus services are available so might not be able to get anywhere decent.
Stage 16 - Tue 19 July. Saint-Paul-Trois-Chateaux - Gap. No hotels in Gap or in reasonable sized towns within a 90 minute radius
Stage 17 - Wed 20 July. Gap - Pinerolo. No hotels in Gap.

My last remaining possibility is a visit to Grenoble on 23 July for the Time Trial, but seems a bit far to go just for one stage.

As a follow up to this post in 2007, I've updated my Tour de France diary...

I've been to the Tour for the last few years and I've think I've worked out which stages I've been to. When at a stage finish, I always try and get as close to the finish line as possible and have always been in the last kilometre or so.

2010
A foray to a Grand Depart in another country!

Prologue - Rotterdam. Wet, miserable, rubbish photos.
Stage 1 - Rotterdam - Bruxelles. Near the finish in Bruxelles
Stage 2 - Bruxelles - Spa. By the start in Bruxelles

2009
Another good vintage

Prologue - Monaco. Fairly near to the finish and managed to get some decent photos, including a certain Manx Missile!
Stage 1 - Monaco to Brignoles. Watched the race pass on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice.
Stage 2 - Marseille to La Grande Motte. Saw the Depart by the port in Marseille
Stage 3 - Montpellier - Montpellier time trail. Just up from the start point

2008
Unable to go. :(

2007
Possibly one of the best years... 3 countries, 4 stages in different 5 towns

Prologue - London. 200 m from finish on the Mall. What a location!
Stage 1 - London to Canterbury. Marshalled on the stage and then chased the race to watch the events unfold at Stone Street (poor Cav!). Joined the Caravane on the boat across to France...
Stage 2 - Dunkerque - Gent. Stood on the finish line in the rain but missed the end of race crashes.
Stage 3 - Waregem - Compiegne. Saw the Depart from Waregem

2006
Prologue - Strasbourg. Near to finish line
Stage 1 - Strasbourg to Strasbourg. Watched the 'pre race' - the riders just trundle by through the town until they are in the open road then the race starts properly. Then moved to the finish line to wait for the race.

2005
Stage 3 - La Châtaigneraie to Tours. Near the finish line
Stage 4 - Tours - Blois. Team Time Trial. About 1km from the start so wasn't too busy. Conveniently found a bar where I was able to sit and wait for the teams to finish - along with quite a few other folk!

2004
Stage 3 - Waterloo to Wasquehal. Near to the finish line
Stage 4 - Cambrai to Arras. Team Time Trial. About 1km from the start on a good bend. Remember this stage as it chucked it down all day!

2003
Stage 11 - Narbonne to Toulouse. Near to the finish line, but nearly wasn't. After standing for a couple of hours, the police decided to move a group of us as we were "in the wrong place". After a great deal of persistance, we were able to stop.
Stage 12 - Gaillac to Cap' Découverte. Individual time trial. Just by the starting ramp.
Stage 13 - Toulouse to Plateau de Bonascre. Watched the race start at the Cité de l'Espace

2002
Stage 5 - Soissons to Rouen. Near to the finish line

2001
Did not attend.

2000
Stage 13 - Avignon to Draguignan. Near to the finish line

1999
Stage 14 - Castres to Saint-Gaudens. Near to the finish line. Remember being not too well this year - had been away in Poland the week prior and picked up a bug leaving me with severe trots! The day previous I was pretty bad but managed to hold out when it was time to watch the race.

1998
Stage 14 - Valreas to Grenoble. Near to the finish line

1997
Stage 19 - Montbeliard to Dijon. Near to the finish line

1996
Stage 19 - Hendaye to Bordeaux. Near to the finish line

BASE Mobile Belgian SIM card

Thu, 2 Jun 2011 14:28:00 +0100

This post is another of those that's there mainly for my benefit to save searching for it in future!

Background: I have a BASE SIM card for use when I'm in Belgium. The main use is data, especially that Facebook is free for users at the moment, providing you access it through http://0.facebook.com.

One of the bargains is the data packages that are valid for 30 days.

50MB - €5 ----> send SURF5 to 1914
500MB - €10 ----> send SURF10 to 1914

The APN settings are

APN: gprs.base.be
User name: base
Password: base

I hope you find this as useful as me!

Wouter Weylandt

Tue, 10 May 2011 18:26:00 +0100

On 9 May, Belgian cyclist Wouter Weylandt was descending along the Passo del Bocco, during stage 3 of the 2011 Giro d'Italia.

He looked over his shoulder to see where the riders pursuing him were and he lost control of his bike, crashing face down. It's not been said how fast he was going, but around 60kph may be a good estimate. Medical staff tried to resuscitate him, although he had died instantly.

The tributes paid to him the following day were quite touching. The race carried on, but at a reasonably sedate pace - for those riders anyway! Each team took a stint on the front of the bunch before passing to the next. Even though there wasn't any 'exciting' cycling to see, the roads were still jam packed with spectators not cheering, but just clapping and many of them holding up the number '108' - the number Wouter carried during the race.

At the finish line, Leopard Trek, the team he rode for, went ahead of the other riders and crossed the line with their arms round each other's shoulders. They even called forward Tylar Farrar from the Garmin team to join them. He lives in Belgium near to where Wouter lived and they were best friends.

That's one of the things I like about cycling - the camaraderie. Even in the face of adversity, the guys rally round and help each other.

Wouter Weyalndt. 1984 - 2011. RIP.

Mad December

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 14:37:00 +0000

Well - time for my next excuse for not updating my blog. I've not had time.

All too often I read on Facebook that folk are bored. I wish I had time to be bored - just once in a while.

What have I been doing? Well, in the last month, I've

worked 16 shifts - one of which was a mammoth 16 hours because the job was in a mess due to the heavy overnight snow and the staff relieving me not able to get to work!
worked another 4 additional shifts, mainly because of the bad weather we've been having
attended a course in Birmingham for a day
been to Brussels for my annual December trip to Belgium - this ended up in a mess with me arriving back in to London two hours late, missing my last train to Doncaster and being given a taxi as there were no hotels in London left. The taxi took me to Birmingham as I was on a course the following day (the one in the point above!)
Been to two Christmas dos
Been on a shopping trip to Belgium and France - one full day and two parts of days on P&O Ferries
Cooked Christmas dinner for 10
Cooked Boxing Day tea for 4

I think that's about it!

Tunisia

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 03:13:00 +0100

Last year, me and Jemma got married. For various reasons, our third attempt at a honeymoon (which I never seemed to blog about at the time…) was a holiday in Sete in the South of France. This year, we were meant to do something ‘special’ as a replacement, but because of neither of us pulling our finger out and biting the bullet, that seemed to go by the way too. In a way, that was possibly a good thing as one of the ideas was to visit China, and one of the areas we were looking at was quite badly affected by the monsoon rains. India was also a possibility but again, they didn’t get away with their rainy season lightly either!

In the end, we cut our choices down to Mexico or Tunisia. The hotel we’d seen in Mexico looked absolutely stunning – the ‘swim up’ rooms in particular! The only down side is that there was nothing in the area outside of the hotel. Cancun was around 25km away, so a bit far away for a quick trip should we want to pop out.

This left Tunisia and the resort of Hammamet as this was in the centre of one of the big tourist areas and close enough to Tunis for a visit there. After a few tries at booking and then finding out that they were actually fully booked, we ended up with the ‘Le Sultan’ which didn’t look at all bad – rated 9 out of 120 hotels in Hammamet on Trip Advisor.

Apart from a stupidly early start (no Thompson, I’m not going to arrive 3 hours before an 06:30 flight when 1 will do!), the journey was pretty uneventful until we landed in Monastir. I say uneventful – once we’d left UK airspace, there was very little cloud all the way to Africa and the views were breathtaking, especially over the French Alps.

Once we’d landed, the fun began. Upon arrival in Tunisia, one must go through Customs and Immigration, and being out of the EU, controls are a little stricter, including filling in a landing card which is scrutinised by the authorities. Multiply this by five plane loads of holidaymakers who’d all arrived on the first wave of flights from Manchester, Paris and wherever else and you end up in a queue for an hour.

After fighting through this queue, we were soon on our way to the hotel in a what seemed to be an underpowered mini coach. The driver was really having to thrash the engine to keep up with traffic on the motorway, and from where I was sat, I could see the temperature gauge creeping up. Finally, he pulled onto local roads for the last part of the journey and thankfully the dial dropped.

Check in at Le Sultan was swift – so swift in fact that we’d not even been up to the rooms before being ushered off for lunch in case we missed it!

Soon after, we were sat by the pool on the grassed area, enjoying the pool and the drinks served to us by the waiters, and this combination seemed to suit us for the rest of the week.

Several highlights / ‘points of interest’ during the week were

1 – Hammamet Medina. On our first night we decided to pop into the centre of Hammamet and visit the Medina. No sooner had we left our taxi did we bump into someone who was from our hotel. He offered to show us around the Medina (which he did – very briefly) and we ended up at his “brother’s” shop. After 20 minutes of him attempting to sell us overpriced, forged tat, he could see that he was getting nowhere and got very cross with us. We left rather quickly. Evidently, this is the latest scam in the area. The strange thing was that we never did see him working at our hotel… Later on, we did enjoy a German style beer brewed at the Brauhaus Gerbere.

2 – Tunis. We went by train to Tunis and it was mad. There was probably no other word for it. We wondered around the Medina, or rather just went with the flow of the people and visited a few touristy sights.

3 – Scuba diving. I went scuba diving and it was great. I probably looked a bit of a treat on the practice session, wearing a wet suit and flapping my flippers by the hotel pool, but there you go!

4 – The Sultan Hotel. Couldn’t complain. The room was good, the pool excellent – especially with waiters bringing drinks and above all the food was first rate. It seems to cater towards Tunisian and French tastes so no chicken nuggets or other rubbish!

5 - Mint tea. It's everywhere - tasty, and drunk in huge quantities.

I could be tempted to go back again…

Tour de France 2010... but not in France!

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 23:14:00 +0100

A few days overdue, but earlier this month I paid my annual visit to the Tour de France...

2 July

What a great start to the trip - a train in front of mine decided to pull down the overhead wires, stopping me getting to London. The train I was on terminated at St Neots where we were all turfed onto a local service that was routed via a diversionary route. After an age of stop-start we finally passed Stevenage and got a decent run into London, arriving about 2 hours late. The lovely people at Eurostar let me change my ticket for the next service – they’d had quite a few people affected by the disruption! A not very sparkling run on Eurostar dropped me in Brussels 20 or so minutes late, missing the connection to Antwerp.

I finally arrived in Antwerp 3 hours later than I should have been and it was boiling! weather.co.uk said it was 34C – at 7pm!!! It was far too hot to stop in the hostel I was staying in so a quick tour of some of the bars was in order.

3 July - Prologue

Rotterdam’s only 30 minutes from Antwerpen on the new high speed line those Belgians have built – hardly time to start up the netbook to utilise the free wifi! I had a quick look at Rotterdam before heading to Zuidplein and it didn’t really seem that interesting – a bit of a concrete jungle. The only place of note was Doelencafe – a bar that sold beer produced at their sister pub that brews its own beer.

So – over to Zuidplein and once again, I’d left it a little too late to get a really good spot on the finishing straight, so I had to make do with about 450m from the end. To get a really good spot, then you have to stake it out a good 3 or 4 hours in advance. This year, the weather didn’t make the prospect of being stood there getting soaked that appealing. Soon after the publicity caravan went past, it started to absolutely sling it down.

Inside the Zuidplein shopping centre, the cheapo shop selling brollies at €1,50 were doing a roaring trade. Back down by the Prologue course, one brolly tied to the fence kept my bag nice and dry and another kept me dry(ish!). Result! By the time the riders started, the rain stopped, but there was an occasional shower. It still remained overcast and as such, most of the photos I took didn’t really come out that well.

4 July - Stage 1

The weather was a bit better for my journey back down to Brussels. By the time I’d arrived at the hotel, I was sweating like nobody’s business and my room wasn’t ready. I changed my clothes in the hotel loo to head for today’s Stage finish area and the receptionist then told me my room was ready. When I arrived in the room, the air conditioning was on and the room was freezing – I had no alternative but to lie down and quite literally just ‘chilll’.

Feeling much better after this chill out session, I headed to the area where the finish was a found a spot around 400 metres from the finish line. People were already gathering and as I found a space, I was moaned at by some locals for standing there! Let’s say I didn’t take too kindly to this and gave them a piece of my mind before I stormed off. “If you think you’re being crowded by me standing here now, then give it a couple of hours when it’s 4 or 5 people deep”.

I found another spot to stand on the other side of the road, which looking at it was actually a better spot as the sun would be behind me for taking photos. It was good to be able to keep up with events by following them on Twitter. For the event, I followed @cyclingweekly as they were doing live updates and set up my account to forward the messages to my phone. Bingo!

Followers of the Tour will recall the carnage of the 3 crashes in the last 1.5 kilometres. I’d managed to place myself more or less half way between the last two, thereby missing out on the excitement. I did suspect something was wrong when the riders came over the line rather slowly in ones and twos instead of a bunch with Cav powering away at the front.

5 July - Stage 2

Managed to finally get a decent spot on the first bend from the start. The weather was also reasonably bright! Cor! By the time the riders rolled past, the weather had started to deteriorate and by the time I’d walked down towards the centre of town after they’d gone past, it was once again slinging it down. At least the people I was stood with today were more friendly than the previous couple of days – a Danish chap and an American woman. There seemed to be an awful lot of English speaking people about – many of which were from the nearby offices on ‘breaks’.

Summary

Not a bad trip, but not the best. With the exception of the folk I was stood with on Monday, most of the people didn’t seem to be as friendly as those I’d normally meet. The weather was the big let down – not a patch on the south of France and Monaco last year and even London a couple of years earlier!

Photos

At http://www.ieatcurry.co.uk

What's Landis playing at?

Sat, 22 May 2010 15:57:46 +0100

In 2006, Floyd Landis won the Tour de France. A month or so later he was stripped of his title after a urine sample tested positive for synthetic testosterone - a performance enhancing drug that is banned in the race.

Since then, he has devoted no end of time trying to prove his innocence - he has made numerous television appearances, including one where Lance Armstrong telephoned the host to show support for him. He's spent something like £1.4million in the process , with about half of that coming from his fans from

In May 2010, he admitted to taking performance enhancing drugs. What's more, he's also implicated Lance Armstrong, George Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer and David Zabriskie. Now, either they have done something totally wrong, bringing cycling, especially American cycling into disrepute. On the other hand they could be innocent and Landis is just digging himself further into the mire.

No ash here!

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 04:27:00 +0100

Following on from recent travel problems, I expected some sort of farce on our trip to and from Marseille last week. On the way there, one train was delayed because of a national rail strike and in the Lyon area, loads had been cancelled but fortunately nothing to delay us at all. Then came the return journey...

0940 Marseille St C - Lille Europe
1535 Lille Europe - London St Pancras

Two trains to travel all the way from the far south of France to the heart of London (and a few steps to Kings Cross for Doncaster) with just one change of train - this being at the same station - you just have to go through security and passport checks. It's a great journey - stunning scenery and much more sociable than flying.

The day before setting off home, I went to Marseille St Charles to find out if the train would be affected by the strike and I was told by a member of staff there that the train would normally.

The following morning, we arrived at the station and Jem spotted that our train wasn't on the departure screen. Quizzing the staff, we were told we'd have to travel via Paris. I found this a little strange knowing how busy Paris was, but we boarded the train.

Arrival into Paris Gare du Lyon was punctual, but it took an age to get to Gare du Nord as the RER (Paris suburban network) was on strike too.

Paris Gare du Nord was mad. No, that's an understatement if there ever one! The station was rammed and everyone seemed to be queueing. I was glad we had tickets.

I was directed by a member of staff to join the Business Premier queue to exchange my tickets, but when I got to the front of the queue, was told that there were seats available, but only full fare Business Premier ones and the First Class tickets I had were not exchangeable (even though they are!). As I was not prepared to pay another 250 quid or whatever each, we boarded another train to Lille Europe to try and make the connection we should have made, however we weren't scheduled to get there until 10 minutes before the Eurostar left. Generally not enough time, but they could have flexed the rules a touch...

With an hour and a half to kill in Lille, so there's only one thing... Head for a bar!

We were thankfully permitted to travel on the service running two hours later, but even then we were only guaranteed a tip up seat. Wine service was slow too ...

Time for a break!

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 04:12:00 +0100

Jemma was in the second week of her Easter Holidays, I had a few days off work and it was cold in Doncaster. Off to the sun!

I was actually a bit worried as the weather forecast at one point wasn't so good for the south of France, but closer to departure time, it picked up a bit.

Wednesday

Within a few hours of leaving home, we were speeding along in a TGV heading for Lyon. It's a couple of years since we've been to Lyon - it's a really nice city and a convenient stop off on the way to anywhere else further south. It also has a number of brew pubs...

Ninkasi
Still there at Gerland and still brewing beer. Nice and sunny outside but all the tables were took up by stoooodents.

Brasserie Georges
Also still there and probably will be forever. Enjoyed a home brewed beer while we waited for a table, before being alerted by an electronic device. We both enjoyed a hearty meal of choucroute before staggering back to the hotel.

Thursday

Decided to visit Lyon's other place for brewing beer - Café Chantecler. After being sat outside for about 10 mins with no sign of service, I wandered inside for a menu, only to find that there were no house brewed beers, just the bog standard commercial tripe. Still no service so we cleared off and went back into the city enjoyed lunch at 'Le New's Cafe'. Definitely worth another visit!

Time for a beer before moving on to Marseille...

By the time we arrived at the hotel in Marseille, got ourselves sorted and had a pre dinner drink, it was getting late. On the corner of a square behind our hotel was a 'Le Peano' - an absolutely wedged pizza restaurant so we thought we'd give it a go. The food, cooked at the front of the restaurant in a wood fired oven was excellent. An interesting touch was the 'huile piquant' - spicy oil for drizzling on pizza or paste. Many restaurants have this, but Le Peano's was in old plastic Coke bottles with a hole in the top for pouring! One table of customers were bemused by this and the lady, not realising what it was tipped it up and covered her top in oil! All of this was presided over by the owners - 'Nanette et Roger'.

Friday

The original plan was to go to Aix-en-Provence, but as the weather was so good, we decided to hang around Marseille and head towards the beach later on. Lunch was at Le Plat Provencal, just down from Le Peano which was fine - nothing great, but not poor either.

After lunch, we caught the bus along the coast to the Prado beach area but unfortunately, the clouds started to get darker so we settled for a drink at one of the trendy beach side cafes.

Dinner this evening was to be at the highly recommended Le Femina. Marseille has a long north African tradition, and this is one of the finest examples of their food in the area. Service was good, portions were huge but there was one downside - payment. My card was refused. I went to the bank - it wouldn't let me get the funds out. I have a second bank account that lets me use a Maestro card abroad and I just top it up with the funds that I need for the trip. It was only later that I realised that I'd not transferred anything into it before this trip - oh dear. The guy in the hotel was very good and just told us to pop in again. I tried a few times and they were closed. I've tried calling with no response so it looks like I'll have to shove some cash in an envelope.

Saturday

A visit to Aix en Provence. Didn't really do much apart from wander round, stopping off at cafes and had a ride on 'Le Diabline' - a sort of round town tour on an electric vehicle. A very nice city - well worth a visit. A bit of a shame we didn't arrive earlier as the market was just packing away.

Our evening meal was at a new restaurant - Le Catering. Food and service was excellent - well recommended.

I have lines...

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:15:00 +0100

I must update my blog more frequently.
I must update my blog more frequently.
I must update my blog more frequently.
I must update my blog more frequently.
I must update my blog more frequently.
I must update my blog more frequently.
I must update my blog more frequently.
I must update my blog more frequently.
I must update my blog more frequently.
I must update my blog more frequently.

etc