The first three stages of the 2027 Tour de France have been announced and the excitement within the Welsh cycling community went through the roof. The route does not go past our front door, or even near, the closest part of the route is an hour drive. But the Tour de France is coming to Wales.
Beyond riding my bike around the house or the village, the Tour was my gateway into the world of cycling. I remember watching TV news clips of Robert Millar climbing mountains in the polka dot jersey in ‘84, and listening to the sports news on the radio and hearing about Sean Kelly winning another stage. For English-speakers it was a golden era, and that era spoke to me. It was 10 years later that the Tour came to the UK for the first time in two decades and only the second time ever. With a friend I drove three hours to Ditchling, a village just outside Brighton, arriving in the evening with no plan other than to watch the race on Ditchling Beacon. We parked in a field, gave the farmer ten pounds to pitch our tent and walked to a pub in the village. For British cycling fans of a certain age those two days have gone down in legend, not least because Chris Boardman lost the yellow jersey the day before coming to the UK and Sean Yates gained it on the second day in Britain. Thus we had the bittersweet irony of the only two British riders in the tour wearing yellow, but neither when the tour was actually in Britain.
I have little memory of those two days. Pictures in books and cutting from the press remain, we managed to get up to just below the summit on Ditchling Beacon, with the best views and the biggest crowds, both of us lost to the cameras by a sea of bodies. I also remember while waiting for the race, hearing a champagne bottle pop and a few seconds later being hit on my belt buckle by the cork. The guilty party were on the other side of the road high up on the bank above the road. I remember even less of the second stage, after spending a lot of time driving around the Portsmouth area trying to find somewhere to camp. We, again, ended up in field and watched the race on what might have been a categorized climb. Either way, the fans were out in force again and made a country lane in south England seem like a climb in the Alps.
So, several nights ago, messaging apps pinged at regular intervals as more people learned about the route through Wales. Maps and mapping apps were cracked open and I’m pretty certain at least one friend was looking at whether it is realistic to consider watching at the top of the Rhigos and then gravelling a handful of miles on forestry trails to the top of Maerdy Mountain. I’ve been to the Tour a few times in the last 32 years and while it may be possible to just rock up at the base of the most popular or decisive climb of the stage and be able to get to the prime viewing spot, it certainly won’t be easy. For the stage in Wales, the decisive climb, or climbs, by the looks of it, are all in the South Wales valleys, the most populated area of Wales and a short distance with easy transport links from Cardiff. If the crowds on those hills in the Tour of Britain are anything to go by, it’s fairly certain that it will almost be impossible to move on those roads come 4th July 2027.
As much as I’d love to watch the pro men’s peloton race up climbs I was riding several times a week back when I went to watch the Tour in ’94, I’d rather catch them earlier in the day, where we can drive the hour and change from home and maybe not fight quite so hard for a good vantage spot. Crack open the picnic and enjoy the anticipation, because ultimately that is what a day watching the Tour is mostly about, waiting for a load of people on bicycles to pass by in a drag of turbulence, dust and noise. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.