One of my best cycling memories was seeing the 1996 Tour de France on the Hautacam in the Pyrenees and camping up there afterwards. I slept with the front wheel of my Benotto under the flysheet, locked to the tent pole, thinking if anyone tried to steal it, then I would wake up. I had forgotten that I was on top of a mountain in rural France where the crime rate was probably miniscule compared with the UK.

Unfortunately, that memory was tarnished somewhat as the lead rider and winner of the stage and eventual winner of the Tour de France, Bjarne Riis, admitted to doping from 1993 to 1998 in 2007. Amazingly he still holds the ‘record’ for the fastest time up the Hautacam (riding the last 6km in the ‘big’ ring), faster than both Jonas Vingegaard 2022 and Tadej Pogačar in 2025. To think that 30 years of mechanical, physical and nutritional advancements cannot overcome the benefits derived from performance enhancing drugs in the 1990s is unbelievable.   

[Having only one roll of film (36 exposures) for the whole 10-day trip, I remain quite pleased with quality of the pictures – engineering’s gain was obviously photography’s loss…]

So, with more time (potentially) available I had been keeping an eye on the release of the 2026 TdF route in November 2025 and then promptly booked a bed in a refuge on the Col du Galibier in the Alps for the night before Stage 20 (the Queen’s Stage). The rest of the planning could wait.

And due to ‘family matters’ ‘it’ waited until a month before to suit the (limited) time available. After cycling to Newhaven and catching a night ferry from Dieppe, I would then generally follow the Avenue Verte to Paris, catch an Flixbus to Lyon (with bike), cycle to Moirans, see three mountain stages before cycling to Geneva to catch a flight back to London – 7 days (and a few hills).

Maps produced with permission from OpenStreetMap

As always there is a little trepidation about the trip and anything that could potentially derail it – health, fitness, mechanicals, transportation links, together with the added stress of ‘WordPress uploads’. While I have a very comprehensive packing list for ‘travelling light’, it always takes ages – the less I take the harder it is. However, thirty years on from the Hautacam I remain very grateful for being able to think about doing (and hopefully completing) such a trip. Carpe diem as they say.