To follow the Tour de France – I mean to really follow the Tour de France – you have to be prepared for some degree of sitting in traffic on a mountaintop. There are ways you can play this: you can be actively hostile, you can be deeply inebriated, you can be grimly resigned to your fate. But the best way to handle it, I think, is to just get on with life and have some food while you watch the traffic crawl past.
The finish of stage 17, on the Alpine slopes of SuperDévoluy, was a particularly trafficky event. There was one road in, which also happened to be the road out. At the top: many camper vans, many punters, many media vehicles, all of whom were trying to get down, ideally at some point this week. With the help of some friendly/stern gendarmes, the hierarchy was this: teams first, caravan second, media and other accredited vehicles third. This meant we crawled down the road for what felt like many hours but was probably just one or two. Nonetheless, when you’re bored and delirious you find inspiration where you can – in this case in the roadside dinners of the fans.
The genesis of this article was a table of Germans under a marquee. They had pasta – tagliatelle, in fact – in “red sauce”. Good? “Yeah, very,” was the answer, communicated through unsmiling nods and a generous number of thumbs up from the three young men shovelling it into their faces. The traffic moved on, meaning that I couldn’t get a picture. But it looked like they had it pretty dialled. We were pleased for them.
Time to hop out of the car and wander down a static line of traffic, looking for people and their meals.
My first stop: a nearby Citroën C3 containing two English speakers, Rosh Jobinson and Faley Cretz. They are here to see the Tour and celebrate French culture, but had manifestly failed to prepare their tums adequately for the mountainside. Faley (pictured above) showed me that he had pistachios. Once he’d finished them, he would leave the shells on the roof.
To drink, some lukewarm Orangina. A truly sad meal. What a pair of losers handsome fellas. [edited for clarity – ed.]
Faring quite a bit better were a quartet of charming Danes. Here they are:
I think it’s fair to say that sausages (or as these folks would have it, pølser) are a staple of the roadside chef, but the Danes had a particularly dialled setup. Observe the little Weber BabyQ! Observe the tongs and the deckchairs and the general cheer with which these nice young people were approaching their day on a mountain!
Just look at this. We’ve got a diverse range of sausages, some aux herbes, 18 in total for at least four sossies per Dane. No wonder they’re looking so pleased! But the fait accomplit is surely the bread on the side: a real crusty boi, just waiting to get some grill marks on it.
We’re not done yet. This is a balanced diet: we’ve got three different chargrilled veggies: capsicums, zucchini, aubergine. And more baguette! And some baby wipes to keep things tidy!
But wait, there’s more! Tomatoes, cracked pepper, mozzarella, drizzled in oil. Could take or leave the onion, but honestly, these guys have knocked it out of the park.
Further down the road, I come across four young Spaniards, who quickly corrected me that they are, in fact, Catalan, and gave me a bit of a primer in the Catalunyan independence movement (in brief: not moving in the right direction for these guys’ liking). They have a decent set up: a table, a Bialetti Moka Express coffee pot, proper cutlery (despite no apparent need or anything to use it with) and a state of intermediate herbal intoxication:
They’ve each got an E. Leclerc t-shirt and one of them has scored a Skoda hat. It’s been a pretty good day on the mountain. What’s for dinner, boys? “Lunch,” was the enigmatic answer.
That lunch: some sliced white bread, some coffee, some milk…
We’ve also got some coffee, some tobacco, a lighter, and an empty packet of original-flavoured corn chips and salsa. In sum: an honest day, gainfully spent. Were you happy with the result of the day? “We support Vingegaard,” they offer. Ah. “And also Pogačar!,” offers another. In that sense, we agree, today had a little something for everyone.
I emerge from the haze of the Catalans’ Special Cigarettes and continue my walk down the mountain. My next stop: an abandoned table next to an abandoned camper, with two parents helping their children do a wee in the forest up the hill. They have a sunny spot, some fruit juice, some sunscreen and all the time in the world.
By this point we are nearing a hairpin and the traffic is showing signs of maybe, possibly, moving. Smoke rises from next to a French campervan. A Frenchman bearing a plate is about to disappear inside. I accost him, and his very nice wife comes out to help translate.
They, too, have sausages. They look great, albeit a bit carcinogenic. They are, I am told, ‘spicy’. Through the open door I can see that there is a supplement to the sossos. “Oui, tomatoes,” they confirm. Can I take a picture of the cooking device? “Of course.” Merci beaucoup.
The traffic starts trickling down the mountain and I wheeze my way back up to the car. There will be no time for further interviews, but there are opportunities for pictures. As we climb the next climb on the way to our hotel, we see a marquee flapping in the breeze and a Union Jack forlornly carried by the shouts of chapeaus past.
All in all, a pretty good setup. Careful inspection (ie. zooming in on Lightroom) shows a big jar of pickles, as well as several plastic cups with names on them. One bears the mysterious Sharpie inscription on masking tape of “Adam – 50 cm – It’s paint” which is probably a fun inside joke but from the outside poses many more questions than it answers.
All in all, it’s been refreshing to see the varying national approaches to a roadside meal: the Danish opulence, the no-frills Catalan snackage, the jocular Brits, the tragic American pistachios. In the melting pot of the Tour de France, the world comes together to cheer for cyclists and to sate their appetites for sport and sausage alike.
Did we do a good job with this story?