A Garden Gnome in Paris…

I mentioned last month about how our trip to Paris to celebrate Rachel’s birthday had been inspired by one of our favourite films, Amélie. An important sub-plot of that film revolves around Amélie stealing her father’s prize garden gnome, gives it to her airline crew friend, who then sends back anonymous photos of the gnome from landmarks around the globe. All this is a cryptic ruse to encourage her father to travel…

In the weeks before our trip, Rachel surprised even me with her film geekery and determination to seek out the key locations from the film. We chose our apartment on Rue Lepic specifically for its position in the heart of Montmartre, within walking distance of Sacré Coeur. But she went much, much further, checking out various unofficial ‘walking tours’ and chatrooms. I was shocked, but not a little impressed.

And so to enter into the spirit of things, I acquired (secretly) a gnome of our own to take to Paris. We revealed him to Rachel as the Eurostar train emerged from beneath the English Channel into France, and from then on he was a nearly constant companion as we explored Paris for the next three days.

We went to Gare de l’Est to get passport photos…

We managed to visit most of the main locations from the film, and I’ve created a Google map here. You’re welcome!

Film geeks ahoy! Spot the reference…

And here are some snaps of those locations and our gnome in Paris…

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Quand le doigt montre le ciel, l’imbécile regarde le doigt…

I first saw Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain on a cross-channel ferry on the way home from a holiday in France, and immediately fell in love with it. It’s become a real ‘go-to’ film for Rachel and I: if the world is a bit sh*t and we need to be reassured of its goodness and joy and the magic of human relationships, Amélie sets us back on the right path.

It’s recently taken on a very prominent role in our household, but for more positive reasons than the world is completely sh*t (more of that later). Having not watched it for a couple of years, I must have seen it five or six times in the last couple of months, and become even more familiar, but without losing any of its charm or personality for me. When I checked what I had said about it at my Facebook/Flixster review page, I discovered this (rather pithy) review…

The most perfect imperfect film… it’s quirky beyond belief, stylish and stylised, deliberately, knowingly odd.

And I love every moment of its fabuleux, wondrous, charming, touching run-time. The ensemble cast are fantastic. The red-green art direction is lovely. The visual effects are brilliant. Watch it, watch it again.

Marvel at the details, bask in its glorious humanity, enjoy its foibles and flaws. This is beautiful.

…and I was right. But because it’s become so ‘important’ to us this year, indulge me. Here are three reasons why I love Amélie, and why I Reckon you should seek it out and watch it if you have an ounce of humanity. To be honest, I could probably work out thirteen reasons why I love this film. Give yourself up to its magical realism and quirks, and feel better for it.

This will contain spoilers, to both the plot and other aspects of the film…

The Importance of Seemingly Insignificant Moments…

From the opening shot on Rue St.Vincent in Montmartre, Amélie is filled with details that other films would leave on the cutting-room floor, or more likely would simply get cut out during the writing process. These give the film and its characters great depth and real humanity, that we can relate to. that we can care about. The quirkiness of characters is brought to life explicitly with “he likes…she dislikes”, celebrating very personal pleasures. There are countless moments like the beggar who declines Amélie’s offering as he “doesn’t work on Sundays”… Character flashbacks are wonderfully drawn and often incredibly rapid, giving us barely a glimpse, but even that glimpse is enough. The montage of orgasms lasts just a few seconds, but is utterly hilarious, better than 90% of jokes in other (ahem) comedies. We are told Amélie likes to skim stones on the canal, which the film then reinforces occasionally as we notice her stop to pick up and pocket a stone off the street. These details are priceless to us identifying with her.  The opening sequences, in which we are introduced to Amélie‘s childhood, are simply gorgeous, from taking photos of animal-clouds to her cherry earrings and eating 10 raspberries at once…

It’s about people, not plot…

All those rich, nuanced, vibrant character details would be left out of most films, because writers and studios are usually obsessed with plot, with action, with the progression of the protagonist towards their goal, and how they will overcome their antagonist and other obstacles. The basic linear plot of Amélie is almost ridiculously simple, and spans just a few days. She’s a quirky young woman, who seems unable to form a lasting relationship, until she meets a young man in a train station. Will she make that connection with him?

But Jean-Pierre Jeunet uses this storyline as the carrier to encompass a whole milieu of characters from Montmartre, and explores them constantly, with tangents galore and flights of fancy. We become immersed in the world of the Café des deux Moulins and its staff and regulars. There are layers of ‘stakes’ in the film that apply to the different characters at different moments. Many of these people are hardly the stuff of Hollywood rom-coms, as in fact many are at best quirky, if not downright outsiders or ‘marginal’ in terms of a Hollywood society.

The romantic hero pf the film, Nino Quincampoix, works two jobs, one in a sex shop, the other on a ghost train, and seems to have little motivation except his collection of discarded passport photos. Joseph is basically a bitter misogynist who records conversations in the café. M.Dufayel is a failed artist, Hipolito a failed writer. Amélie‘s father is a withdrawn widower who barely ventures beyond his garden. M.Collignon is a crass bully and Lucien has more than a hint of being a bit pervy.

M.Bretodeau is (by his own admission) a bit of a loser, estranged from his daughter and grandson. But when, through Amélie‘s intervention, he recovers the tin box from his childhood, we are swept up in his bittersweet memories, and the final shots of the film give him and us wonderful redemption, yet he gets less than 5 minutes’ screen time. This richness and affection for all the characters is a joy to experience, and something virtually unique to Amélie.

It’s fabuleux for a reason. This is a fairy tale, wonderfully told…

I Reckon Amélie is one of my favourite examples of ‘magic realism‘. The sound design, camera movements and colour palettes are distinctive, definite and deliberate, and Jeunet repeats things throughout the film. The camera swoops in on faces, the narrator plays a huge role as an omniscient presence. Household objects even come to life and talk to  Amélie. Meanwhile, she’s not afraid of breaking the 4th wall with abandon, whether it’s a glance, a smile or actually talking to the audience.

The relentless use of red and green makes Amélie look like no other film; it’s obsessive. From her clothes to the lighting in almost every scene, from the suitcases that go past in a station, with barely seconds on screen, to her Father’s beloved gnome, everything is red and gree. These details, like the characters’ humanity, reward multiple viewings: they’re a real treat. The score is fantastic and utterly French, filled with both jaunty tunes and bittersweet melancholy. The film is filled with discovery and adventure, from Amélie‘s childhood to the truth about the man in the red sneakers to the word-pictures she paints for the blind man.

I love love love this film. Just writing bout it has made me happy, which is something the late, great critic Roger Ebert also acknowledged in his review, describing it as

…a delicious pastry of a movie…You see it, and later when you think about it, you smile…

It is so hard to make a nimble, charming comedy. So hard to get the tone right and find actors who embody charm instead of impersonating it. It takes so much confidence to dance on the tightrope of whimsy. “Amelie” takes those chances, and gets away with them.

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I remember when all this was just fields…

A couple of weeks ago I returned to my alma mater, Exeter University, to give a lunchtime talk to students about starting a career in marketing. I’d solicited views and opinions from some learned colleagues and clients, and added more than a few of my own, together with a couple of clips and quirky images to keep it interesting. I got some great feedback, and hope to do it again. But that’s not what this is about.

I already knew that in the *coughs loudly* 21 years since I graduated that plenty of things had changed on the campus, in terms of new buildings, state-of-the-art hi-tech facilities and so on. I knew I had to restrain myself from banging on about hand-written essays and having to actually read books. But in the few hours I was there, so many differences leaped out at me. But then again, quite a few things were still reassuringly familiar too…

I actually do remember when all this was just a field…

It weren’t like this in my day…

• The scale and quality of new facilities is pretty impressive. It makes me think how the whole place back in 1990 must have looked unbelievably shabby compared to today. Everything is clean and shiny.

Is this really the shabby place I played orchestra concerts, sat my exams, saw The Wonderstuff & James…?

• It feels so much more corporate and professional. The Forum is tremendously impressive, combining the library and main student building in a large complex with workspaces, shops and offices, including a huge internal atrium…

• The students seemed to have a more sober, professional attitude. The library was heaving with people when I walked past. Most of the people I saw in the coffee bars were actually working, and the ubiquity of laptops and tablets still surprised me even though I knew what it would be like…
• I tried to revisit my old Hall of Residence (Hope Hall), but (of course) the buildings were all locked, only accessible with a swipe card. The lack of security 20 years ago seems almost naïve to me now.

Missing, presumed lost…

• Among all the new signage and smart new paved areas, a few things are notable by their absence… with all the slick organisation and professionalism there felt like there was a bit of a personality vacuum; there’s precious little charm. For all its glass and cleanliness, The Forum could have been a shopping centre. It certainly didn’t feel like something the students could ‘own’.
• Exeter was never the most diverse campus in the world; it used to feature in The Sloane Ranger’s Handbook! But there was still a sense of youth, of at least some political awareness, even in sometimes trite things like The Nelson Mandela Room, or a strange metal sculpture that went up almost overnight to commemorate the students killed at Tianenmen Square in Beijing. These have gone. It seems older, somehow.
• The building where Rachel spent her first term-and-a-half, a residential annex of Hope Hall, the rooms where we first talked about Monty Python, first kissed, has gone. It’s been replaced by a modern block of self-catering apartments.

The more things change, the more they stay the same…

• The streets around the campus were still reassuringly familiar. Rows of terraces with resonant names for me; Jubilee Road, Old Tiverton Road, Monks Road, Mount Pleasant Road. Cambridge Terrace, where I spent my final year, was almost delightfully grotty compared to the renovations that have gone on elsewhere, with the same down-at-heel takeaways, and a very unwell-looking tramp slumped on the steps that led up to our old front door
• Similarly, many of the pubs still look the same (at least from the outside), and the local shops are mostly all still there
• Parts of the campus are unchanged, and look like something out of the East German Government’s Things to do with Concrete catalogue. Best of all of these is Cornwall House, always the lesser of the two main student buildings, but also home to The Lemon Grove, the legendary (sic) student nightclub on campus. It was inside these hallowed doors that I first met Rachel, and from where I first walked her back to the now-non-existent residence…

They don’t put this bit in the admissions brochure

• Best of all, when I walked intoThe Ram bar on campus at 2.30pm on a Thursday afternoon, it was packed.

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Bicycle races are coming your way…

It was only by complete chance that we even knew the Critérium was happening in Quillan that weekend. We’d driven virtually 1,000 miles from our home in Gloucestershire to the far South West of France, and were sitting in a local neighbourhood restaurant in Esperaza, quite excited to learn that Friday night in La Frite Normande is“Moules Marinières Frites – A Volonté” (all you can eat Mussels & Chips). As I nipped inside to use the facilities, I saw a poster advertising an event for the next Sunday, in the next town just a few km away. And I got even more excited.

Quillan is about the same size as Cirencester; not very big, with a population of no more than 5-10,000. Imagine Bradley Wiggins coming to take part in a cycling race around and through the town centre. That’s what was going on in the Critérium, except the French version of Wiggo is Thomas Voeckler, cycling pro extraordinaire and recently-crowned King of The Mountains in the 2012 Tour de France. And as France wasn’t experiencing the same glorious Olympic Summer as the UK, he’s as big a name as they have right now.

Having been avid followers of the Tour de France, “Little Tommy Voeckler” (as some of the ITV commentators jokingly called him) was already a bit of a legend in our household. For our daughters, he was only a small step behind the likes of Wiggo and Mark Cavendish.

View over Quillan from (most of the way up) the Col du Portel

We arrived in Quillan not knowing what to expect. The town is nestled between some impressive mountains, and indeed a climb in the Tour de France started there earlier in the summer. Our anticipation rose even more driving into town, as we passed Thomas Voeckler himself riding out on a warm-up. The town centre was effectively closed, but once we’d paid our entry fee (£20 for the family), we wandered around the town in a bit of a daze until we got the hang of how it all worked…

It seemed quite amateurish, really. Grass-roots cycling but with added celebrities. About 40 riders took part, with slightly more than half selected from local and regional amateur cycling groups, riding alongside members of the major professional teams, with a few star names dropped in to attract the crowds (and no doubt some useful appearance money). All the riders seemed to be operating for the day out of the back of an estate car, getting changed in the main square’s car park and fixing equipment. The riders were completely accessible; we just wandered up to several to get autographs, and they were all really willing to chat.

The course went down the main high street, over a bridge, back around a very tight corner over another very old and narrow bridge, down a back street/straight and around to the start. The race ran for 75 laps of just over 1.1km each, which meant if you missed the peloton flying around 1 lap, you barely had to wait 90 seconds for them to come around again. It was like seeing the Olympic Torch, but without all the sponsors’ vehicles, and with the torch going around and around and around.

From a fairly quiet start, the atmosphere in the town built pretty quickly. The roadside bars were all packed, the pavements quickly became crowded around the finish line and the key corners getting on and off the medieval bridge.

I’m sure the riders use events like these for sprinting practice or interval training. Every few laps a different group would break away from the peloton, only to fall back a few laps later. With the main street barely 300m long, there’s no chance anyone could genuinely escape.

By the finish the streets were genuinely packed. We’d seen Thomas Voeckler change his own wheel. We cheered like mad for a local rider who was eventually dropped by the gradual acceleration in the race. We marvelled at the riders’ skills in negotiating the incredibly tight corners, and remarked at the amazing roll-call of previous winners (Jacques Anquetil, Charly Mottet, Richard Virenque). We enjoyed the sophisticated lap-counter…

This was one of the highlights of my year, let alone just our (excellent) holiday. Grass-roots cycling with genuine professional stars. Watching this sort of sport right up close and personal (just about) made up for not seeing any of the Olympics. It wasn’t a surprise that M. Voeckler took the prize, but it was a delight to see him spend so long being interviewed on the podium afterwards, showing genuine thanks and respect for the fans who came to spectate and his fellow riders.

I’ve put more photos of the event on my Facebook page

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The river’s deep, the river’s wide, the river’s water is alive…

As I may have recently mentioned, we just spent a terrific holiday in SW France, where it seems that (utterly unlike the UK) the summer of 2012 has been unseasonably hot and dry. While we were there, the temperatures were consistently above 32°C/90°F and on several days reached 38°C/102°F. We stayed in a gorgeous little cottage whose only drawback was that it had no pool. But it didn’t take us long to discover the many local opportunities to cool off…

Driving the roads around this area, it’s not uncommon to see cars crammed into a layby or parked on the verges, or sometimes turning off down unmarked tracks. Almost invariably these are the locations for river swimming, and we discovered a few favourites very quickly, three of which are indicated on the map.

Off to the West of this map (about 20 minutes drive) is a lovely man-made lake at Puivert, where the local council has brilliantly created a sandy beach, set up a café, marked out areas for safe bathing and supplied a lifeguard on duty 6 days a week, and even built a diving jetty. But no toilets that normal humans would want to use. Still, the water is warm and the views are gorgeous.

Also off the bottom right of the map, on the road between Rennes-les-Bains and the tiny village of Sougraigne, is a fairly famous bathing spot known locally as La Fontaine des Amours. I’ve heard from different sources that this refers either to the shape of one of the pools formed by the river cascading down the valleys, or the fact that it’s a spot where two streams meet and become one. In any case, it’s almost impossibly lovely there, nestled below the road, overhung by steep hillsides of dense forest.

I pinched this photo from the netmefrance.com website. Thank you.

But because of this secluded, shady location, the water in La Fontaine is really, really cold. Even during this scorching summer, it moves too fast and never gets prolonged sunshine. Our younger daughter Eleanor was usually fine with wny pool, lake or river, but no sooner had she splashed into the deeper pool here than she screamed to get out. While we were there some local kids splashing around kept joking that they were turning into glaçons (ice cubes)…

The river at La Fontaine is the river Salz, so-called because it not too many miles upstream it bubbles out of the ground from a natural salt-water spring, although it’s barely noticeable to taste. Further downstream we found two lovely spots in the same river. At Rennes-les-Bains and close to the ruined Cathar castle at Coustazza, there are small concrete river crossings, just big enough for cars or (more likely originally) small farm vehicles and tractors. These bridges have been transformed into semi-effective dams, slowing the river flow just enough to create a pool deep enough for swimming.

The spot at Rennes-les-Bains was terrific, with easy access, a couple of benches nearby, and while it was just about deep enough for an adult to swim, it was also perfect for our children to splash about in safely. It seemed extremely popular with the locals, who would turn up for a late afternoon dip, and with walkers and cyclists to cool off.

Perhaps our favourite find was the spot at the top of this map, on the road North from Couiza up towards Limoux. A large layby on a sweeping bend in the road is the clue, and once you’ve scrambled down a short but steep path to the small beach, the river Aude awaits you.

There is easy shallow-water access and a small sand-bank on the near-side of the river. 50 yards downstream there’s an outcrop of rock for jumping (about 8-10 feet high). Better, though, just upstream the river narrows to a mini- set of rapids, which make for some exciting swimming for grown-ups in deeper water. And there are these amazing natural caves on the far side…

We loved swimming in the rivers and lakes of the Pyrenées – and are already trying to work out how we might go again next year. I’m not sure I would be brave enough in the UK, as the cold water of La Fontaine was only nearly bearable because the ambient air temperature was over 90ºF. River swimming was a revelation to me. If you’ve got a Mediterranean climate or a wetsuit I really recommend it.

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A Royale with cheese…

Among many great scenes in Quentin Tarantino’s brilliant Pulp Fiction, one of the most famous features Jules and Vincent, two hitmen, discussing the “little differences“ that Vincent encountered on his recent travels in Europe. Having just spent 2½ weeks in France myself and had a thoroughly good time, here’s a handful or two of little differences that I (mainly) love experiencing every time I cross the Channel…

• Fresh fruit and veg in the supermarkets (especially down South) is massively superior in quality to the UK. Certainly they have the climate for tomatoes, nectarines, avocados and so on, but the food seems fresher, tastier, more real. It doesn’t have the bizarre uniformity we get in the UK, and actually seems ripe and ready to eat on the day of purchase
• In all the towns we visited, they still persist with the (ahem) old-fashioned approach of shutting shops at lunchtime; similarly, on-street parking is often free over lunchtime. Most of the supermarkets don’t open on Sundays. How do they cope?
• Dunking a croissant or pain au chocolat into a bowl of coffee for breakfast
• Spending £5 every day on bread and croissants. The daily visit to la boulangerie is a real treat, but it needs careful budgeting!
• I love seeing coloured shutters protecting houses from the heat of a Southern French summer
• There doesn’t seem to be any great compulsion to compare prices on everything and anything. One petrol station might charge up to 10% more than another only a few hundred yards down the road, something which, in the UK, would probably spell doom and closure for the expensive one
• The French love a bit of Direct Action. Four years ago we were in Reims when we were treated to the sight of White-Coated (rather than white collar) protests. The local Pharmacists were angry at what they saw as the increasing encroachment of supermarkets onto their traditional areas of specialist advice and expertise. This time, we were in Carcassonne where the workers at a major nearby ice-cream plant were protesting against the proposed closure of this plant by its new venture capitalist owners. Crude hand-drawn cartoons, badly amplified megaphones and trestle tables made up the slightly shabby but very noisy event at the main entrance gateway to this UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• The broadsheet French newspapers are never knowingly underwritten. Libération was always my favourite when I studied in France 20 years ago, and I still like it now. Take this extract from a recent article commemorating the 30th anniversary of ‘The Thriller in Manila’, between Joe Frazier and Muhammed Ali…

Ali, c’est Achille aux pieds légers et aux bras lourds. Les pieds sont moins légers qu’il y a onze ans, du temps du match contre Sonny Liston, mais le jab est toujours aussi performant, et ces coups sortent comme des jets de lumière, à sa vitesse. Achille a 33 ans, l’âge du Christ. Et il a toujours sa tchatche. Il convaincrait les marchands de vider le Temple pour lui, mais le Temple, c’est lui.

This roughly translates as…

Ali is Achilles, light-footed but with heavy arms. The feet aren’t as light as 11 years ago, when he fought Sonny Liston, but his jab is just as powerful, and these blows flash out like jets of light, and just as fast. Achilles is 33, the same age as Christ. And he still has his chat. He could convince the merchants to empty the Temple for him, but then, he IS the Temple.

When did you last read anything like that in your paper? Achilles and Christ in the same paragraph. Beautiful, overblown, nonsense!

• When, how, and (more to the point) why do French men grow up thinking that it’s perfectly OK to stop your car at the side of the road, get out, and just take a p**s next to your car, in full view of traffic?
• Why does France persist with those awful ‘footplate’ toilets? Even at the stunning Viaduc de Millau, only constructed in the last decade and a fairly major tourist attraction, the toilets are primitive holes in the ground, with no paper provided. Near where we were staying in the Pyrenées, the local council had amazingly created a sandy beach next to a small lake, marked out safe bathing areas and provided a lifeguard 6 days a week: but the toilets had no doors or paper, or actual toilets beyond the hole in the floor.
• On the other hand, I love love love French markets. For the saucissons secs, the fruit and veg, the live animals, odd clothing, poulets fermiers, cheese and so on. We really enjoyed our local Sunday morning crush in Esperaza, walking back laden with food for lunch.

• Similarly, motorway service stations are very different in France. Probably because of the distances between major towns and cities, there are hundreds of aires dotted around the motorway network at regular intervals, ranging from landscaped picnic areas to full-blown affairs. But even these larger things aren’t much like those in the UK. When we returned home, we experienced Reading Services on the M4 on a Friday evening; a huge carpark rammed full with vehicles disgorging hundreds of people inside, swarming around fast food outlets. In France, far more people seem to travel with their own food; bread, ham, fruit, cheese. The service stations have more expansive grounds and outdoor seating. They feel less like a commercial conveyor belt for you to refuel on calories and caffeine, more like somewhere to stop and relax, recharge for a while.
• But then when French motorists get back in their car, they have a very strange way of driving (especially further North in the country). Most motorways are two-lane, and if you’re overtaking, God help you to be going more slowly than someone behind you. The standard plan is (rather than slow slightly to retain a safe gap) accelerate right up to the back of the car in front, wait two seconds, and flash your lights impatiently.
• Avenues of plane trees towering over long straight roads, with fields of vines or sunflowers alongside.
• Stargazing in Espereza is something wonderful. No light pollution, clear skies. Thousands of pinpricks across the night sky, with the Milky Way scattered through the middle.
• The city centre of Orléans is unlike most in the UK. The Medieval Quarter is full of restaurants, bars and cafés, packed with tourists and locals, students and families. It was often noisy, with music playing out across the terraces and streets, but nowhere did I see people drinking in packs, maurauding from bar to bar.

Vive la différence!

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Shut up, legs!

I have been more than mildly obsessed with the Tour de France in the past three weeks. Now that Bradley Wiggins has become the first Briton to win this epic sporting marathon, especially devastating his rivals in the time-trials, and Mark Cavendish proven himself to (still) be (probably) the fastest sprinter in the world, and both Chris Froome and David Millar also won stages, apparently the whole of the UK has taken the sport to its heart. I can genuinely hardly wait for the Olympic Road Race this coming Saturday and Time Trial next Wednesday.

Life is so busy at the moment that I’ve barely had time to gather my thoughts or compile anything more coherent. But with the Olympic Games ready to start on Friday, please accept this slightly haphazard but honest collection of reasons why I still think the Tour de France is the greatest sporting spectacle of them all.

Team SKY… much as it pains me to shower adulation on anything sponsored by Rupert Murdoch’s money, I have nothing but admiration for everything Dave Brailsford and his teams, and especially the awesome riders of Team Sky have achieved.

The spirit, teamwork & discipline they all demonstrated during three gruelling weeks of this last Grand Tour is astonishing. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, from Chris Froome waiting for his team leader when he quite clearly was the strongest man on the mountain to Mark Cavendish, the reigning world champion and TdF Green Jersey (remember?!), taking turns to collect drinks and food for his team-mates, and accepting there would be no lead-out train for his sprint finish.

The collective ability and execution of a plan was breathtaking. Team Sky utterly dominated the race at virtually every stage, dictating how stages might be won, and usually by whom. They were the Chuck Norris of this year’s race. Maybe it got predictable, but it was truly awesome.

Bradley Wiggins is a champion. Having made his mark with Olympic medals on the track, it has taken him 4 years to become the leading force on the road. Fastest in the time trials by a country mile, he has also become a fearsome climber. He doesn’t have the explosive change of pace, but he does have the ability and confidence in his ability to stay with almost anyone, and more importantly, to pace himself at such a rate that he can outlast anyone. And then on the final two days of the tour, when previous champions would be staying out of trouble, he led out the sprint train for Mark Cavendish.

The final stage finishes with a helter-skelter series of 8 circuits around the Champs-Elysées in Paris, and it’s always a bun-fight of teams fighting to get their sprinters to the front for the last frantic charge for the line. TV coverage showed the Team Sky instructions from the car: get Bradley on the front from 1km… And so, at 1,100m from the finish, Wiggins took charge, leaving the other teams for dead, taking Cavendish and his team-mate Edvald Boassen-Hagen in his wake. EB-H (the Norwegian national champion and a mean sprinter in his own right) negotiated the two final corners, slipstreaming Cavendish into a clear lead before he even started his final sprint.

I will never tire of watching this.

Cycling is an team sport focused on individuals. Wiggins is the Team Sky ‘leader’, and the team is entirely geared to his success; getting him in the right place, protecting him from peloton crashes, pacing other teams and their leaders out of the race, helping up the difficult climbs. In what other sport do world-class athletes recognise themselves as “domestiques”, whose job is to follow orders, ‘bury themselves’ for their team and do a job that goes against all their natural self-instincts. Froome could have won the final mountain stage, but stayed to ride with Wiggins. Mark Cavendish stoically remarked “it’s like playing Wayne Rooney in defence…” of his team role. I doubt Mr Rooney would accept that role with such good grace, commitment and sacrifice.

Jens Voight. I’ve waxed lyrical about his attitude representing everything I love about pro cyclists. Nearly 41, he’s the oldest man in the peloton, but towards the end of the 3 weeks, and indeed in the final few laps of the Champs-Elysées, he was leading a break. He knew there was little chance of success, but he did it anyway. Time and again he stretched men 10 years younger with lung-busting, leg-crippling power. More than these physical exploits, I love his searing honesty. Halfway through the Tour, he gave a brilliant interview. Barely 48 hours later, his team leader, Frank Schleck tested positive for a prohibited substance. The spectre of doping leaves a heavy, heavy shadow over the Tour. Effectively door-stepped outside his bus, Jens said the only thing he could say. In this 90 seconds you can hear all his personal conflicts as a long-time friend is under suspicion. As Ned Boulting says “there’s never a bad time to talk to Jens Voight”.

ITV’s coverage is simply brilliant. With decades of experience, commentators like Phil Ligett, Ned Boulting, Chris Boardman and Matt Rendell provide a fantastic, on-the-ground view of the event. Interviews with riders moments after finishing, in-depth access to the more arcane arts of road racing which never talks down to the novice viewer but is constantly interesting enough for the experts.

The Tour de France has the best arena in all sport. Forget the Birds’ Nest Stadium, Monaco Grand Prix or London Marathon. France is an astonishingly dramatic country, and the organisers of the Tour know they have a job to promote its regions. Everywhere the regions turn out for the Tour and pay large sums to be a prestigious host town for a stage finish. Most impressively, I love all the efforts made by farmers…

Seriously, I think my perfect summer job might be to be a cameraman inside the Tour de France helicopter. That would be a great way to spend July…

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I can see for miles…

Our bid to stride out around the countryside in 2012 continues…

A few weeks ago we were pressed for time, so took a slightly lazy approach to a wonderful viewpoint on the Cotswold Escarpment. Uley Bury is an iron-age hill fort that offers terrific views in virtually every direction.

It lies immediately above the village of Uley, which is beautifully nestled in a gorgeous valley, and also home to a fine local brewery. I Reckon the best and most satisfying walk starts in the village, climbs steeply up to the plateau before returning down through the woods for a well-earned pint. But we were stretched for time, so instead parked close to the top and walked around…

It was a stunningly clear winter’s day with great visibility down to the plain of the River Severn and beyond. Even the slightest breeze up there has a keen edge at this time of year, but wrapped up warm it was wonderful to breathe the fresh air and appreciate the undulating landscape all around.

Another recent outing was from our front doorstep. We had been invited to lunch with friends who live in Avening, a village just a few miles from Tetbury, so had planned ahead. We dropped off a car at their house in advance, intending to walk across the fields to them, then drive home afterwards. The day itself was foggy and proper winter cold, but with no wind. Together with a friend and her three girls we set out, the children often running ahead, narrating their own stories and adventure scenarios as we went. Despite a brief navigational issue when we realised that dense fog and a fairly featureless landscape made navigating quite tricky, Google Maps on my phone proved we actually were where we thought we were, and we made it safe and sound. It was less picturesque than Uley Bury as visibility was no more than 100 yards across ploughed fields with only occasional hedgerows to break up the murk, but the shared experience was still fun.

I made this using mapmyrun.com

By the end the kids were getting tired and a bit cold, not to say hungry, but after 3.5 miles they deserved the excellent lunch.

Last weekend wasn’t a winter walk, but instead a fantastic hour or so of late-afternoon sledging at Batchwood Golf Course in St Albans. The snow was firmly packed and pretty icy, perfect for sledges, there were enough families there to make it fun but not dangerously crowded. The fairway slope was just long and steep enough for our kids to have a great time going down either with us or by themselves, and the grown-ups had a ball too. Given the weather forecasts, that may be our only sledging day this winter…

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It’s not quite a Jaguar…

Farewell then, my trusty steed.

After 7 years & 364 days and 149,869 miles, last Friday I parted company with our VW Golf Estate. It’s getting increasingly expensive to maintain, the MOT and tax are due, the bodywork needs lots of attention, the rear windscreen wiper has stopped working and the front suspension seems to be making some odd noises.

We’ve traded it in, replacing it with a 3-year-old Ford Focus C-Max, 1 lady owner, full service history, really good condition etc. It was with a weird mixture of relief and regret that I drove away from the Dealership in my ever-so-shiny, smelling-like-brand-new car, with its higher driving position, much quieter petrol engine, firmer seats and 109,000 fewer miles of history.

The Golf and I shared some really important moments and experiences…

• 2nd June 2003: starting work at The Real Adventure. I bought The Golf as in my previous job I had a company car provided. It was a strange old time, as I’d been on gardening leave for a few months, we’d been trying to sell our house in Oxfordshire without much luck in order to move back to Gloucestershire. Rachel was coming through Post-Natal Depression after the birth of Hannah almost a year earlier. And now I was switching from the corporate client-side environment to a marketing agency. For the first five months I commuted from Woodstock to Bath, a 3½ hours and 140 miles round-trip, almost every day.

• Summer 2005: possibly the best Ashes series ever (until last winter!). I recall vividly driving down the A46 towards Bath, being passed by another car just as England took an Australian wicket. Both I and the other driver punched the air, whooping and clapping. We noticed each other and grinned.
  A couple of weeks earlier on 7th August 2005, we’d been driving to visit Rachel’s parents in South Wales. The M4 was clogged with traffic, cars full of football fans travelling to see The Community Shield match in Cardiff. The 2nd test at Edgbaston was heading for a tense finale. I was texting my Boss who was overseas at the time with no access to a radio or TV coverage. Every 10 minutes I’d update him “Australia need 37, 1 wicket left”, and he’d reply a few minutes later “this is killing me”. The radio commentary was brilliant, but almost unbearable. Finally it was over, and it seemed like the occupants of every (stationary) car on the M4 simultaneously erupted in joy.

• 16th November 2005: the day Eleanor was born. Rachel was 9 days overdue, and fed up. I went to work with her resigned to another day of waiting. 2 hours later I had a call: “don’t come home yet, I don’t want to jinx this, but…”
  15 minutes later: “I’ve called the midwife. Come home now!”
  It’s a 40-minute drive home, and within 15 minutes I had another call: ” Don’t come home. The midwife has called the ambulance, we’ll see you at Stroud Hospital…”
  Another 10 minutes: “Hello Chris, this is [the midwife]. Don’t go to the hospital. We’re not getting in the ambulance. Everything is OK, but come home!”
  I arrived home at 11.55am, Eleanor was born in the playroom(!) at 12.35pm.

This blanket is still Eleanor's favourite. It goes everywhere...

• 2nd June 2008: I was very lucky to have a 6-week (paid!) sabbatical in 2008, during which we embarked on a Grand Tour around France for a month. Taking in Reims, Beaune, the Massif Central, The Pyrenées, The Périgord and Loire, we drove 2,400 miles in 4 weeks and The Golf was fantastic. Laden with the four of us and luggage, plus often copious amounts of beer and wine (yes girls, it is OK to sit on that), we saw some amazing places, none more breathtaking than this swooping bend on the A75 autoroute, approaching the Millau Viaduct…

• (From) August 2009: our first camping trips – for which we were grateful for the Estate Boot Space… our first trial run was with some friends’ tent and gear, but we’ve had great times and now have started to acquire our own camping kit, although I have a feeling that you can always have just one more thing. We’re aiming for 3-4 trips this year.

• Seemingly every few months: clearing out the garage / loft / garden… down go the back seats, in goes a sheet of plastic to try to protect the boot space, and I would fill the car with bags of soil, boxes of rubbish or recycling, a Christmas Tree, rubble, or even occasionally the rabbits’ hutch.

• I’ve also managed to get stuck on a motorway twice during these 8 years, which made for interesting afternoons getting to know strangers, pondering to myself about the fragility of existence, and then driving past the supposed incident where people had actually died and thinking “is that it?!”

I’ve spent more time in The Golf than I care to calculate, spent more money on it than I dare to think about, eaten countless sandwiches, chocolate bars and pork pies (!), tossed hundreds of apple cores out of the window, roared with laughter at podcasts, and sung along to karaoke classics galore.

My car is dead, long live my car. Here’s to many more happy adventures…

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I’ll send an SOS to the world…

It was reported last month that mountain rescue teams in The Lake District have been receiving increasing numbers of call-outs for walkers who are ill-equipped to be out on the mountains, through lack of appropriate gear, map-reading ability, or plain common sense. Dubbed ‘the shorts and flip-flops brigade’ there have been instances of people attempting to navigate in poor weather or fading light using nothing more than Google Maps and their iPhone.

When I was a child I was a Cub Scout. My mum was an assistant leader (The leaders’ names were all based on characters from The Jungle Book: she declined to be Baloo the sleepy brown bear, instead choosing Bagheera, the sleek and smart Indian leopard!). Apart from the usual knot-tying (left over right and pull it through), games and generally being prepared, we made reasonably frequent forays out into the countryside, learning to read maps and indeed read the terrain around us, relating that back to the contours and features on the map.

I’ve been kind of fascinated by topography ever since, and love poring over maps, plotting routes and the like. While I recognise the benefits of being connected to a GPS tracker that can tell others your location, the idea of setting off for a hike or even a drive without any more understanding of where I’m going than what Google Maps or a SatNav device tells me is the next direction to take leaves me completely cold.

It’s about the journey, not just the destination. Relying on battery-powered tools that simply say ‘follow the path for 700m, then turn right’, without any connection to the actual terrain and features of a landscape just seems insane to me. It makes me question why you’re there in the first place, without having either ‘the right tools for the job’ or indeed given much thought to what you’re about to do. It’s like turning up to the gym wearing a suit, having just eaten a massive Sunday Lunch and drunk a couple of pints.

Navigating primarily by machine  – either walking or driving – means you’re not fully present in the journey. You might as well stay in the living room and plug yourself into a game on the Wii or XBox – perhaps “High Fells Walker“. Part of the pleasure I get from ‘real’ navigation is using all my senses to assess the situation and make decisions, using my intuition alongside the information provided by the map or the compass. I can make detours, extend or cut the route short, change my mind in full awareness of the alternatives. I feel more connected with my surroundings and the environment.

It won’t surprise you that I’m not a big fan of car satnavs either (although I recognise their huge value in unfamiliar urban situations or to avoid traffic jams). In 2008 we took an extended Grand Tour around France for a month, and drove over 2,400 miles. We travelled from Calais down through Burgundy, across the Massif Central, into the Pyrenées and back up via the Périgeux and Loire Valley. The whole trip was planned at home using Google maps, which was invaluable to judge overall daily driving distances, alternative routes and places to stay, possible detours to specific sites.  Streetview is amazingly useful, as it helps give you real visual clues and prompts, so places you’ve never been seem almost familiar. I even made town centre maps to help navigate in cities.

er, could you call this a bit 'on the spectrum'?

But we drove with a big ol’atlas in the car. We watched out for landmarks and interesting buildings. My daughters learnt to recognise vines as we drove past (they didn’t quite get the differences between, say, Chardonnay and Syrah. That’ll come…).

My atlas is my friend...

I’ve written before about air conditioning and the like ‘isolating’ us from the reality of our environment. Navigating by satnav or iPhone is another aspect of this. It can cause untold dangers if you’re not properly prepared (you can take me out of the cub scouts, but my training is always with me!). Perhaps just as importantly, it diminishes the experience, and seems to me to disrespect the beauty, grandeur, history and complexities (both man-made and natural) of our surroundings.

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