Stage 12, Montpellier - Castres, 179 km, Wed 11th July

Before I describe Stage 12....just a little reminder about who will be benefiting from the charity money raised from this epic bike ride. Education for the Children exists to help some of the poorest children in Guatemala and finances raised will help build a safehouse.

One safehouse costs £10,000, so we are over halfway there. If you are reading this and enjoying the updates and haven't donated......have a look at the sponsorship page on letour2007.com and see if you can help.

Thanks !


Stage 12, Montpellier to Albi. It started off fairly nice, but then we had to ride the cycle tracks 'belgium style' for a while to avoid getting loudly beeped by the large trucks that came past.

We met Matt (helping with logisitics today as change of support driver) and Emma after about 40 miles and we gourged on the standard of pain au chocolates etc.


The route then stayed on the same D908 road for many miles as we entered the Haut Languedoc region and the road started to rise as we started a Cat 2 climb that took us over 900 metres, but not before we had been through an interesting tunnel at the top of another little col near a village.

The weather then turned and the rain started. If you remember a previous post about us not being in Belgium anymore, well I take that back. You would never know we were in the south of France as we cycled the last 50 miles, it was about 15 degrees, the lush forests were made up of trees that looked northern European and the drizzly rain cam down. The picture below depicts it quite well.

The freaky European weather continues....this must be the coldest and wettest Tour de France attempt on record (cool for cycling though).

The descent to the town of Castres we very long, very wet and a little dodgy round corners, but we eventually popped out and found the van waiting for us.

We are now at a campsite just outside Albi where we have the 50km time trial tomorrow. This is now obviously small beer for us and so are treating it as a semi-official rest day....which basically means we have fired up the DVD player in the van for the first time on this trip. We are doing something other than cycling and eating !

Last up this evening is the first in our series of 'haunting post-ride portraits'....and I'm (Mark) up first. Technically it wan't post ride as we hadn't finished the stage when it was taken...but you get the gist. We are supposed to look gaunt and haggard and like we've cycled thousands of miles - art style. Don't worry mum...I am maintaining weight I think.

PS -A big thank you for the many kind comments and guestbook posts, we read them out in the evening and everyone appreciates them. And Tim Perkin....don't spend that extra sponsorhip money (if I make it round the whole course) on beer...I am still on track !