Le Tourmalet: the sun never sets on the Tour

Can I tell a secret? Each French sign that indicates an exit from the motorway serves to reinforce the mind and one says to oneself “I was here with the Tour!”. Remembering what year and at what stage is already a prize, except for the cities that saw Miguel Indurain win some of his time trials, because that is already big words.

Germany, on the other hand, I can and do confess that it was a real torment. I don’t know if it’s because the Mrs. Merkel In her time as chancellor, she left many public works undone, but all German highways are upside down and the fact that there is no speed limit is almost a fairy tale among cones, machines working, all in a single lane and, beware, to which one is careless jumps a red flash, like a laser beam, announcing the next arrival of a sanction, even if it is for a few kilometers per hour more.

A country for bicycles

Denmark, already in cycling plan, is not a land of climbers. Everything is flat, without mountains, a country that is easy to travel by bike, full of lanes everywhere and whose capital, Copenhagen, where the Tour departs from this Friday, is a true paradise for cycling, so much so that if someone if there are more bikes here than in Amsterdam you will surely lose count in either city.

Of course, scooters, what is said electric scooters there is not one and much less circulating on the bike lanes. Here people ride bicycles and respect the traffic lights, even the ‘runners’, who also exist. None of them will think of crossing red. someone take note.

Copenhagen has been disguised as Tour. The shops are almost all the ones that one can find on Barcelona’s Passeig de Gràcia or the famous Serrano street in Madrid, they have the same prices, although here the money is counted in crowns (you have to remove a zero and add a little more than one euro when doing mental accounts).

However, they have been decorated with everything that alludes to the Tour. The color yellow predominates to the point, that does not happen even in France at the height of July, that you see many people walking down the street with the jersey that the leader of the race always wears and that is sold in many shops. Someone totally oblivious to this hustle and bustle would even think that a soccer team has arrived, wearing yellow jackets, and that its fans are filling the streets.

all to the street

in Copenhagen the sun never sets because at midnight there is still a little light and because at 3 in the morning the glare already seeps everywhere. People bathe in the canals, stroll and drink their beers in rented boats. And there you also see them dressed in yellow, enjoying a kind of Water Tour, because it’s sunny (although it will rain in the final phase of the time trial, hence all the figures come out at the beginning of the stage) and people throw themselves into the terraces, he exhibits his tattoos, the canals look like an immense beach, from the center to the little mermaidthe only monument to which no garment or symbol linked to the Tour has been hung.

“Get the cars out of the parking lots”, they warn in the city center because the urban route of the time trial, which passes through all the emblems of Copenhagen, will also remain mounted on Saturday so that the people can enjoy the pleasure of cycling the same route made by the heroes of the Tour. Until the prince frederickheir to the Danish throne, will take his bike and be one of the happy Copenhageners who enjoy the Tour in a city where the sun never sets.