<ENDS>

Pip and Fen watched the Tour coverage on Channel 4 television with their hearts in their mouths, their passports in their laps, their bags packed and a cab ordered. As soon as the programme finished, they charged to Waterloo, took the Eurostar to Paris, changed stations and boarded a train headed for Grenoble.

‘Should we have phoned Cat, do you think?’ Pip asked.

‘I wonder,’ mused Fen. ‘No, there’s nothing like a surprise.’

‘How will we find her?’ Pip asked.

Fen shrugged. ‘We’ll track her down,’ she said, wondering for the first time how on earth they would, ‘she said she’s one of only a dozen women there, after all. How difficult could it be?’

‘Where are we going to stay?’ Pip asked.

‘We’ll find somewhere,’ Fen assured her. ‘How difficult can that be in the land of gîtes?’

‘And pommes frites – I’m starving,’ said Pip.

‘Did you know,’ said Fen, looking up from her Channel 4 guide to the Tour de France, ‘the first ever yellow jersey was actually given in Grenoble?’

Pip shook her head and looked fascinated. ‘Oh yes,’ Fen continued earnestly, ‘in 1919. I don’t even know why it’s yellow.’

‘It is yellow,’ Pip discoursed, pulling her eyes away from her copy of Procycling, ‘because the race was sponsored by L’Auto, a newspaper whose pages were yellow.’

‘How interesting,’ said Fen, flipping through Cycle Sport, ‘and Eddy Merckx collected ninety-six yellow jerseys in his career.’

‘Listen to this,’ Pip said, consulting Maillot, ‘scandal and skulduggery! In the second ever Tour, the maillot jaune, Maurice Garin, was disqualified when it transpired he’d done one of the Stages by train!’

‘I think that was the Tour when the other top three riders were eliminated for having set up barricades and scattering nails on the roads!’ Fen contributed. She looked out of the window. Whilst hurtling through such peaceful countryside, it was hard to believe the huge, hermetic world of the Tour de France was just hours away. What was it going to be like? ‘I’m sure we’ll find Cat,’ Fen said, ‘and Fabian Ducasse.’

‘Of course we will, I hope we will,’ said Pip, referring first to her sister and second to the French rider. It was dawning on them that they hadn’t made the journey so much to spend time with their sister, but to see the boys on bikes in the flesh, to experience the Tour de France first hand.

STAGE 13
Valadon-Grenoble. 186.5 kilometres

COPY FOR P. TAVERNER @ GUARDIAN SPORTS DESK FROM CATRIONA McCABE IN DAUMIER

Against the shimmer of lavender fields and the stab of Cyprus trees, amidst the rustic stone buildings tiled in terracotta, under the gaze of the inky mountains of the Vaucluse, the Tour de France found itself in the midst of a Cézanne painting. However, in 40 degree heat, with only a simpering south-westerly hardly easing the humidity, the peloton’s interest in art history was negligible as they laboured towards the Alps and to the promise of cooler climes, if torturous climbs.