Its now less than three weeks away when my wife and I spend the first two weeks of July following the tour around northern france. I cannot frickin wait, esp. for the TTT. One of my jobs is to get the exact route they will be following so we can plan with a bit more specificity, but the official website only has the stage towns, not the exact route they’ll be following during any given stage. Anybody know if this is out, if so where, and if not, when? Thanks.
Look on the olntv.com website they did have the routes
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Thanks Olddude, but OLN has the same map as letour.com, the yellow map of France with the stage towns, but not the actual route of each stage which I need.
I remember that last year the specific information (like the detailed itineraries for each stage) went up on the website only a few days before the Tour started. Good luck with your project.
True. They don’t announce it until the last minute. Once you are in France, buy L’Equipe every day and they will have the route and timetables for every stage.
clm
I don’t know if this has the detail you want, but two links are:
As Cathy said buy L’Equipe each day while your there, it has the exact route with all of the road numbers and an approximate time table. You can find it at every news stand.
The roads usually close a few hours before the race caravan comes though, which precedes the riders by an hour or two depending on the day.
Road closures seem to be somewhat at the discretion of the Gendarmer and could close earlier or later than the paper indicates. Also being nice to the Gendarmer can be helpful, as its not always clear on what basis they allow people through. The mountain top finish areas close to vehicles the day before (or more I think for Alpe D’Huez), but you can ride up the morning of the race.
Also buy a Michelin Atlas of France. It lists all of the small roads that the race is run on. Its pretty easy to map it out with L’Equipe and the Atlas.
If you’re bringing your bikes (and thats really the best way to do it) you can drive yourself to somewhere near the route but not on it, and ride the rest of the way to a good spot to watch the race. This can save you hours after the race comes through since some roads are not opened right away, and when they are there are tons of people trying to leave. You’ll ride right by everyone.
Its a blast riding over there, my wife and I followed the tour last year for our honeymoon and we had a great time. The riding is great, the people were very friendly and warm, and the small towns were amazing. Neither of us speaks French and we had no problem navigating around and having a great time.