In which Sid and Doris celebrate the Tour de France riding into Clermont to visit Bibendum at home.
The Tour de France starts in Florence today. If you watch you will know that villages put out their names or other novelties for the drone and helicopter cameras.
And local riders race us up to the Col.
Coming into a city Doris looks for byways. Here the SNCF has decided to close the access to Doris’s selected bridge.
As there are no actual Gendarmes standing on the bridge it is possible to manoeuvre the bikes past some obstacles and over the railway line to set off again.
After a short day’s ride we are in Clermont Ferrand at lunchtime. The Literary Hotel Alexandre Vialatte lets S and D garage the bikes and then change in the downstairs loos, which is top kind as several of the mountain bothies have refused entry – some until as late as 17.30. And then a room is magically ready.
Alexandre Vialatte was the French translator of Kafka. His more whimsical side found outlet in a weekly column for the local paper before writing his own novels. See also Dickens, Twain, Hemingway, Rebecca West and Margaret Mitchell. Unlike these Vialatte has not found a bigger audience.
Saturday afternoon is spent at the Aventure Michelin in a repurposed factory building with one of those period saw-toothed glass roofs. To Doris’ joy the trams are free at weekends. Yes, if there is a tram D will want to ride.
Sid had a mini visit at the end of the day on the 2023 Monte Carlo event. It is not a just museum of tyres, or maps. It is about the company and incidentally (and barely mentioning politics) the social development of France.
What also comes across is they were innovative and made all sorts.From 1916 Michelin made 200 Breguet BM4s for the Armee de L’Air and the Royal Flying Corps.
And now they make plane tyres. Michelin decided trains would be more comfortable if trains and trams ran on pneumatic tyres. So they made some “Michelines”, with models produced under licence in the US by the Budd Company. It turns out to work for trams and underground trains but not big-rail, but you could still ride on one of these in Madagascar. And maybe we will.
And did you know that with their 1935 Toute Petite Voiture that Michelin were responsible for the 2CV?
After all, more little cars need more little tyres. Before they could launch the 2CV Michelin found themselves in the Vichy zone and producing for export to Germany. In March 1944 21 Avro Lancasters wrecked large parts of the factory, their load including six 12,000lb bombs. Surprisingly accurate so bound to be disruptive.
The Michelin family trod an awkward line between collaboration and resistance. If the factory was running the workers would be spared conscription to labour in Germany. Marcel Michelin sponsored hideouts in the forests around. The night of the raid the factory was apparently well lit by flares. Marcel and son Pierre Michelin were deported. Marcel died in Buchenwald in 1945.
By 1946 the works was up again, with American customers. Not long after Michelin changed the tyre world with the new radial.
As at Ivrea and Olivetti the company offered many social services, such as the company’s purchasing power to run a Co-op type supermarket. Here is some of the worker housing, still looking good.
And after a busy evening catching up on Day 1 of the TdF, we find it was 206km with 3,600m of climb. Which would take S&D 3 days. Roman Bardet, on his final TdF at the ancient (over the hill?) age of 33, did it in a shade over 5 hours without any pauses for lunch, photographs, map consultation or battery recharging.
S and D spend Sunday in Clermont mostly working on the planning of the next few days ride up through Vichy (very exciting), Le Veudre (not very exciting) and all the way to the coast. True spoiler alert: the plan is all on Doris’s map if you want to peek.