From roadside knitters to a caravan of tat, witnessing the Tour’s mountain stage is an eccentric delight
Eight hours of walking, six hours of waiting on a mountainside – could it possibly be worth it?
This was our Tour de France in France debut, though we stood on the Woodhead pass for the descent from Côte de Holme Moss when the Tour started in Yorkshire in 2014. Eleven years later, our sons had become Tour devotees, encouraged by a keen grandad and Netflix’s Tour de France: Unchained, and were desperate to watch a mountain stage, to see Tadej Pogačar in the flesh.
With fingers crossed, I plumped for Hautacam, the final ascent of stage 12 and the first mountain finish of 2025. The Tour had fought its way up its taxing slopes seven times before, lastly in 2022 when Jonas Vingegaard outfoxed Pogačar to win both the stage and, eventually, the yellow jersey in Paris. This time Pogačar was the favourite, though no one knew how bad his fall on stage 11 was.
It had been cool when we set off from our campsite at 7am but an hour later, in the queue forming outside the boulangerie of Argelès-Gazost, the village at the foot of the mountain, the sun was starting to prickle.
Up we went, following the stream of boots and bikes and good cheer, past the hens chasing shadows in a walled garden and a curious goat.
Occasionally, the smell of fresh mint wafted, but mostly it was hot. A refreshment stand in the first village was bursting with bodies and joie de vivre, selling côtes de mouton and saucisse, pommes de terre and compotée d’oignons for 12 euros – or a coffee for one euro if that was more your thing at 10am. A group of middle-aged men broke open a bottle of Bordeaux by the big screen.
On we went, and settled 7km from the top, with a saucy view, a steep approach and a suitably tight corner, plus the welcoming shade of hazel trees. It turns out there is a lot of space on a mountain and sportingly no-one sat in front of us.
The atmosphere was something between a music festival and a marathon
Some were old hands and well prepared. One woman sat and knitted from her camping chair, another did a word search, a teenager sat alone, her nose in Gail Jones’s The Name of the Sister. A couple set up a camping table next to their campervan, and adorned it with a huge red teapot. A poodle wore a neckscarf, two babies gurgled in prams, and a man eased into his wheelchair, his artificial limbs standing neatly in the car.
The higher up the mountain, the more cyclists there were, fit lycra-clad bodies lounging in the shady side of the road, thousands of pounds of expensive bike thrown on the other.
The atmosphere was something between a music festival and a marathon, a joyous mix of Europeans, with the odd American and Australian thrown in.
After a couple of hours, the constant stream upwards dribbled to a standstill, (we were later told the police had stopped anyone coming up from lunchtime) and the mountain slipped into a sieste. The sun was fierce and directly overhead, vultures and kites started to circle.
The quiet was broken with the arrival of the E.Leclerc van, giving out branded polka dot T-shirts and bucket hats, an “Aha” moment as to why so many people are in them on television pictures beamed home.
And that was just the start of the freebies. The caravan, which has become a crucial part of the tour, passed through about an hour and a half before the cyclists, a parade of sponsors throwing out handfuls of this and tat. Environmentally nightmarish, but I defy you not to wave as a huge Orangina bottle tootles by.
Then, at last, the roar of the helicopters. The roadside filled. Our daughter, watching from lower down, told us the climb had started. With patchy phone coverage, we didn’t know who was leading, but first came a car, then a motorbike, and suddenly a pale slip of a man, looking straight ahead and pedalling effortlessly up and away, garlanded with “Allez”.
Pogačar had dropped the rest of the field and was riding back into the yellow jersey, and probably to victory in the whole race. After him, every rider was heralded by a cascade of bravos. Our neighbour on the roadside from Denver pulled out a Colorado flag and coaxed a smile out of a tired looking Sepp Kuss, of the Visma-Lease a Bike team. He sprinted over to try to catch his fellow Coloradan as he turned the corner, cheered on by the crowd. He made it, but by then Kuss’s head was down, pushing for the finish.
After the final man, Bryan Coquard, made his weary way past, a good half hour behind Pogačar, it was as if a tap had turned on. Bikes streamed down the mountain, children on racing bikes, tourists on electric bikes, pros who had just been climbing up now screaming down. A river flowing, down and round to the valley floor and beyond.
Photograph by Dario Belingheri/Getty Images
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