My daughter and her fiancee are traveling through Europe and would like to spend some time in France during the TDF. They are traveling on a tight budget and cannot afford package or organised tours. They will have a tent. Can slowtwitchers offer any advice on how they can plan/organise their TDF experience?
Two of their speciic questions at the moment are 1) "Without a car, how best do they transport themselves from town to town? and 2) Which online forum would they best spend some time on looking for this type of info?
It would make it easier to help if you post the dates they are in France.
But as a start…
Only way around without a car is using the train, as far as I know there are no long distance bus. The trains work well and are fast (TGV) but only stops in the bigger towns.
For the mountain stages expect A LOT of people, it can be hard to find an official camp place to pitch a tent. Some people just camp along the route, don’t know if it is OK but they can check with the landowner (if they speak French)
For cheap (ish) accomodation stay away from the start and finish cities and stay in the smaller cities along the route.
Use Gites de France www.gites-de-france.com, can be very cheap accomodation and is usually a fully furnished villa.
If I were to go spectating at The Tour this year using public transport I would do the Annecy Time Trial, Mont Ventoux stage and the last Champs-Elysees stage. These stages are grouped together and should be possible using the train (for ease maybe rent a car for the Annecy to Mont Ventoux trip and the over night train to Paris)
Another option would be to do the stages in the Pyrenees. Beautiful place and exciting racing but expect mayhem at the stages and during transport. Could do every other stage to make time for transport.
Make sure they buy a magazine with complete route guides when available. It is very useful for finding the right spots for spectating and the expected time for the peleton to ride past.
Rent a car, and arrive in at a mountain stage location 2 days in advance and pitch the tent in a field…go riding till the tour arrives…watch 1 stage live and then leave. It is the world’s largest moving tradeshow…it is chaos everywhere…watching one stage live is plenty. The rest of the time, enjoy France.
My recommendation is that they spend their time in Provence and show up in Nyon a few days before the Mont Ventoux penultimate stage. From Nyon it is a 30K ride or so to the base of the climb in Bedouin and half way up is the Chalet Reynard where the Procencal forest turns into the Mont Ventoux moonscape…if they can plant themselves halfway up the mountain that would be awesome…but they’ll need bikes and will have to ride early. There is a bike store in Bedouin with rentals, but they will need to get there a few days early…can’t remember the name…aside from that enjoy Provence and the Cote d’Azur…there is much more to France than Letour…sitting on the back port of a French Gite and having breakfast sitting beside Provence Lavendar with a hangover from the wine the nite before…
Renault, Citroen, etc have short term lease arrangements that allow you to hire a brand new car for ~$20/day for short term leases. Even with diesel costs, it works out being cheaper than trains and buses if you are moving around and makes things massively easier as you are free to move wherever you want, whenever you want.
In 2005, I had this setup and took my bike on several trips to watch the tour and cycle through Spain whilst living in Prague. French supermarkets can have tents for ~30e, sleeping bags and mats for ~20e, and I just slept out in: supermarket carparks, church carparks, sides of the road, free and pay camp grounds, under the chairlift at the top of Alp d’Huez. During the tour, the locals and tourists dont have a problem with this (a few times I used pretty poor french to ask if I could sleep on peoples lawns and they were more than willing to accomodate). Outside of Tour time, I never had a problem, but the festival feeling made me cautious about where to setup. Note that I would ride mountains or ride and watch the Tour in the morning, drive to my next detination in the afternoon, setup camp in the dark, take down camp in the morning and repeat. If your dughter is not that eager to do a lot of watching and riding, then campsites may be better (they get booked out in advance though). I showered using a 1.5L bottle in France, in Spain, CH, AUT and Germany I would spend every third night in a campsite to get a full shower and the ability to wash my gear. I ate out of fantastic french supermarkets and spent hardly anything.
Forget campers and tents, you dont want to be stuck on the side of a hill waiting for cyclists and cars to get down before you do. For the mountains near the end of a stage, you want to be walking or riding up to watch - the guys in campers on the side of mountains generally only watch a stage or two because they get stuck.