Tour de France in Champagne
Yesterday, the third stage of the Tour de France Femmes, the Women’s Tour de France, started in Reims and finished in Epernay, the main cities of Champagne. This stage of 134 kilometres was won by the Danish cyclist Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig of the FDJ-Suez-Futuroscope team.
Having learnt about the Tour the day before in Chigny Les Roses, I returned to see the event. It was a memorable occasion. About 1 1/2 hours before the lady cyclists whizzed through Chigny, the colourful “Caravan” of sponsors’ vehicles came through. I then waited for the cyclists with a “crowd” of only 20-30. It was a good opportunity for a chat with the locals who were curious to see an Aussie in their midst.
When the much-awaited moment occurred, the lady cyclists took about 30 seconds to pass through the centre of Chigny — you can sense that from my photos. It was a little anticlimactic, but certainly worth absorbing the atmosphere.
This event is in fact the inaugural Tour de France Femmes. In the past there have been various professional women’s cycle stage races across France, with the first of these races occurring in 1955. But they struggled with different issues and never survived.
At this stage, the Tour de France Femmes is relatively modest compared with the men’s event. There are only eight stages compared with 21 this year for men. The women’s race only takes place across northern France, whereas this year’s men’s race started in Denmark, and tripped into Belgium and Switzerland.
But the Tour de France Femmes is attracting great attention, with 131 cyclists from countries the world over, including 8 from Australia. The race has also secured a large number of sponsors and great media attention in France.
As I mentioned, Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig won yesterday’s third stage of the inaugural Tour de France Femmes while Marianne Vos finished second and retained the yellow jersey. Denmark’s Ludwig, 26, finished two seconds ahead of the Dutch rider. Ludwig managed to pull away from a six-strong breakaway coming into the finish line after the 133.6km ride from Reims to Epernay.
Fortunately, just after watching the Tour de France Femmes cyclists I was able to have a delightful lunch in Chigny-les-Roses. The previous day, I bumped into the chef of the restaurant, “Couvert de Vignes” – as you can see from the photo, he is a really nice guy. The food was sensational, the best meal of French cuisine I have had during this stay.
Naturally, I enjoyed the meal with two glasses of Champagne, from the local Champagne house Gardet. Being a local Champagne, it was made from Pinot Noir and Meunier, 50/50. It is described on the bottle as “Brut Blanc de Noirs”, meaning “white from black”, as Pinot Noir and Meunier are black grapes with white flesh and juice.
After lunch, I had to walk back through the vines a couple of kilometres to Rilly-la-Montagne to get the train back to Paris! No worries for an old fella like me!
“Cin-cin!”
Logistics
Train from Paris Gare de l’est to Epernay. Local train to Rilly-la-Montagne. Then walk to Chigny Les Roses.