I AM nursing a sore neck after getting hit by a flying packet
of biscuits at the Tour de France.
It’s a dangerous business, this spectator sport. They reckon
15 million people will watch this year’s Tour. Today alone, there were an
estimated 300,000 lining the last 15km of the tortuous mountain stage into Mont
Ventoux.
No punishing climbs on Friday’s Stage 13 and after about an
hour’s gentle pedalling – if you can call riding a bike at nearly 30 mph gentle
– the 190 riders swept along the northern bank of l’Indrois river and in less
than a minute left Chemillé-sur-Indrois (pop. 227) with nothing but memories
and extra work for the commune’s refuse team.
By that time I’d already sustained my injury. Two hours
before the race passed through we all gathered for the ‘Caravane’, an
indecently commercial cavalcade of sponsors and advertisers in bizarrely
adapted vehicles, like a high-class carnival parade.
The convoy trundled through Chemillé (see above) in the biggest invasion
since the Romans came to town 2,000 years ago throwing souvenirs to the crowd.
Sweets, snacks, newspapers, foam hands, hats, fridge magnets, drinks coolers
all caused a mad scramble for athletic local teenage boys and ungainly,
middle-aged, overweight Dutch visitors.
And then came the biscuits - I believe they were Les Fourrés Chocolat de Bjorg - in a small plastic pack which
caught me just above the left eye. I must have jolted, leaving me with what
those pushy lawyers call “a whiplash-style injury”. And when the peloton came through later I narrowly missed a drinks bottle jettisoned by one of the riders (see below).
No real harm done, although my two-handed forehand a la Marion
Bartoli (gotta support the French on Bastille Day) looks a little weary.
Nothing, though, on Chris Froome who looked like a man on
autopilot after winning today’s 242.5km race - the longest stage of the Tour. A
sore neck would be the least of his problems…
