bordeaux

im sitting in the cultural heart of Bordeaux, mcdonalds, sipping on the worst coffee ive had in france. i thought id give it a shot... anyway its cheap internet.

after a few days hanging out with joe in Paris we hopped on a train and shot across to Cholet to catch the tour. we had a great day watching the time trial, wandering the course and eventually settling on the finish straight [at about 200m to go] to catch the action. cadel 'le metronome' put in a strong showing as im sure you all saw.

next day we hung around to see the peloton head off before doing the same ourselves, riding in a roughly south, south-eastish direction. a few days on the bikes and we'd ridden via Parthenay and Le Vert, and ended up at St Jean d'Angely in the rain. The country here is pretty nice if not boring. Its very flat agricultural land, farming corn, sunflowers, wheat and a few other crops i cant pick. Our last day of riding it was raining and we had a headwind the whole way so it was time to jump the train and skip forward... to Bordeaux.

So this arvo we're training it south from Bordeaux to Lourdes. From there we'll be able to catch the end of the ninth stage in Bagneres-de-Bigorre, the end of the tenth in Hautacam, and the start of the eleventh leaving Lannemezan, before figuring out how we get over to the Alps.

Anyway it should make for a bit of a workout climbing some real hills in the Pyrenees:)