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My tour will have several, not insignificant diversions from its more famous namesake. For a start, as described above in luxuriant detail, my route is going to be based solely around the greatest hits of French cuisine, rather than its landscapes and local politics. Secondly, though there will be a rag-tag peloton for the most scenic bits, I’ll be mostly on my own, as it seems most of my friends, very inconsiderately, have proper jobs that preclude going away for five weeks. Thirdly, I’m going to have to lug everything with me, including a tent and sleeping bag, to leave me more to spend on food (pro teams sleep in hotels where they don’t even carry their bags upstairs themselves). And lastly … I’m a 35-year-old food writer who spends most of her working week testing recipes – and when I say testing, I mean eating them all up and licking the plate while the dog looks on with jealous eyes. Tour riders start off with about 4–5 per cent body fat. I suspect mine, though mercilessly unmeasured, is more akin to a pot of clotted cream.
The problem with this last point, of course, is that it means my power-to-weight ratio – that most vital of statistics in modern sport – is sub-optimal. I’m going to be hauling a lot of unnecessary baggage round France, which is unfortunate when, according to British Cycling, ‘one of the best ways to get quicker on the bike, especially on hills, is to drop a few pounds’. I have a go, I really do, but there’s the small matter of six weeks’ worth of recipes to write and perfect before I go, and eventually I concede defeat, which is unfortunate, because the rather chi-chi cycling outfitters Café du Cycliste, based in Nice but with a smart little shop in East London, are kind enough to step in at the last minute with the offer of some gear. I’m not quite sure that I’m exactly the clothes horse they had in mind to sport the two elegant outfits they’ve picked out. ‘Does … does this come in large?’ I ask tentatively, stepping from the changing room in something so skintight you’d be able to count my ribs if they hadn’t disappeared some time in the late 1980s.
More pressingly, I don’t have a proper bike. My last true love was trashed by couriers on the way back from Marseille last summer and my first reserve, the Pashley, which weighs over 20kg even without a dog on board, is clearly not up to the task. I seek expert advice from friends like Rich, who’s into long, long rides and recommends various bikes that are eminently practical and reasonably priced, Jon, who’s into spending money on really sexy-looking bikes, and Max, who’s into cycling up mountains with the minimum of kit, and then I ignore it all in favour of one that makes my heart flutter when I look at it, and my accountant weep, despite my parents’ generous contribution in lieu of all future Christmas and birthday gifts.
Eddy (named for the pastry-loving Merckx) is a steel-framed (more flexible than aluminium on bumpy terrain, less risky than the pricy but delicate carbon frames used by the pros) Condor touring bike in Paris Green, a colour which feels auspicious. I spend an expensive afternoon in a basement on the Grays Inn Road being measured up (‘your arms are … really long’) and then a nervous month praying he will be ready in time for the off after discovering belatedly that delivery is scheduled for around the time I should be in the Loire Valley.
Fortunately, after I look ready to burst into tears in front of other customers, they manage to hurry things along and he arrives a week before the off, a thing of rare and lustrous beauty, though unfortunately I’m so hungover after a work party the night before that I fail to listen when they explain technical points about how to trim the chain, on the basis I have no idea what this means and am in no state to learn. Instead, I have a vivid flashback to telling a completely sober Nigel Slater that I loved him, over and over, and clench my fists around the handlebars in hot shame.
So I’ve got the bike and the kit and the rudimentary vocab, having enrolled in a panic cramming course at the French Institute in South Kensington and ploughed my way through various Inspector Maigret mysteries instead of packing. This at least means I’ll be able to discuss murder weapons with confidence on my journey, if required.
Yet such is the rush before I go that I don’t quite make time to check if all my gear will fit in my new bright yellow panniers. Sitting in the corner of the bedroom gathering dust, they look vast in comparison with the one I’ve used previously, yet I have a sneaking suspicion that once I’ve included important morale-boosting items like Marmite and sloe gin, there might not be an awful lot of room for luxuries like spare inner tubes and plasters.
Naturally, instead of dealing with the problem, I insist on throwing a Royal Wedding Party for the nuptials of Harry and Meghan, to the evident dismay of my friends, who nevertheless come and support me, because that’s what friends do. Gemma even brings me a tiny bottle of Echo Falls rosé to stick in my panniers.
‘I’m really looking forward to it,’ says Matt, who is accompanying me for the first few days and claims he’s ‘all sorted’, as the three of us – the last survivors of the Happy Event – sit outside the pub at dusk, drinking snakebite and black (it seemed funny when I ordered them).
I giddily watch the dog begging for crisps on the other side of the bar, and vaguely wonder who he belongs to. ‘Yeah, me too,’ I say. ‘Do you think I should go home and pack?’
* With the exception of breakfast, picnic food and cakes, all of which I reckon the UK has the edge on.
† Don’t get me started on the iniquities of the Women’s Tour.
STAGE 1
The Grand Départ, London to Cherbourg
Douillons aux Poires – or Pears in Pyjamas
The Norman equivalent of an apple turnover but with a much cooler name. Considered rather homely fare, you won’t see them on many restaurant menus, but you may well find them in boulangeries. They’re best eaten warm from the oven, with a big dollop of crème fraîche.
It’s 3 a.m., and things are not going according to plan. Instead of the sound night’s sleep I’d been planning, perhaps after a couple (definitely just a couple) of farewell drinks with friends, I’m sitting glumly on a pile of new Lycra, chilled fizz unopened in the fridge, the bin overflowing with packaging, struggling to keep my eyes open and wondering if I should just open the Echo Falls and be done with it. An old friend who offers to pop in on her way home from a night out to say goodbye ‘if you’re still awake!’ gets a couple of paces through the door, regards the chaos before her with visible alarm and declines my kind offer to stay and chat – ‘you look like you’re a bit busy’.
Frankly, I don’t know how I do it, let alone find the time to post a jaunty photo of my almost-empty fridge on Instagram (‘I hope those ferments don’t explode,’ someone comments, once it’s far too late to be helpful) and send friends a mad-eyed selfie wearing my ridiculous new sardine-patterned cap … but somehow I get a couple of hours’ kip before getting up to check yet again that I have the essentials, like a salami knife and a pot of pink nail varnish, and enjoy a final, vast cup of tea.
It’s a solemn moment. I start every day with a mug of English Breakfast, the colour of damp – but not wet, not even soggy – sand, made with boiling water and fresh milk, which definitely rules out anything from the train catering trolley, let alone any prettily tinted tisanes the French might serve under the name of thé. This will be my last cuppa until July, and let me tell you, it’s emotional. Though to be honest, that could also be the exhaustion setting in.
Pushing past Eddy waiting patiently in the hall, I go to meet a