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This was quite fortunately a shorter stage as we were by this time totally knackered and a little jaded. With only three days to go to Paris we were by this time feeling that we’d broken the back of this Tour and it was almost a little hard to motivate ourselves this morning on leaving Roanne.
We left from the hotel adding on about 12km before reaching the start (we agreed to cut this off the downhill finish) to ensure we completed the right distance!
We were met early on by a very gradual 3rd Cat climb which we used to clear away the cobwebs of the previous few days – we seemed to be racing up the climb and for the first time in about two weeks we actually completed a sprint at the top of a climb! Great fun it was!
The route was an undulating one today and so another few kilometres later we hit a 4th Cat climb (only two more to go now until Paris!!) before a descent towards the town of Vichy (home to the exiled French government during the war). Seemed like a good place to hide out to me – if the Germans had ever got there they’d have got lost for sure and never found them (i.e. we got lost and ended up leaving on the wrong road)! At one point we even were on a road which was signposted to both Roanne AND Montlucon – very confusing indeed!
Anyway we found our way back on route and continued on our merry way across quite uninteresting rolling farmland to the small town of Bellenaves where the road kicked up on a long 11km stretch of unclassified climb in the searing heat which necessitated a cycle off the road and into the shade for Matt in order to cope with the excessive heat. Upon reaching La Bosse (no doubt they have a regular Bruce Springsteen tribute night) at 720m we had a mainly downhill stretch to the finish and the knowledge that we had only the time trial (53km) and the final stage (93km) to manage!
Huzzah! Off to Saint Amand for the night in preparation for the final two days of winding down!
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