Stage 5 of the Tour de France and it is a 153.7km long hilly race that starts in Lille Métropole and ends in Arenberg Porte du Hainaut.
The Map
Sights and points of interest along the route
Palais des Beaux Arts de Lille (Lille Palace of Fine Art) was one of the first museums built in France, established under the instructions of Napoleon I and founded in 1792. The museum opened in 1809 in a church before being moved to the city's town hall. The current building was built 1885-1892.
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| Palais des Beaux Arts de Lille |
The original Town Hall was built between 1847 and 1859 on the site of the former residence of the Dukes of Burgundy, Palais Rihour. It was destroyed by an accidental fire in 1916. The Belfry stands at 104m and has 400 steps to reach the top, although you can climb the first 100 steps and then take the lift to top.
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| Lille Town Hall and Belfry |
La Vieille Bourse (the Old Stock Exchange) was built in 1652. It opened as a Stock Exchange in 1861 but only 3.4% of the capital changed hands each year. In 1921, the new stock exchange (Chamber of Commerce) opened and this building was vacated by the traders, renamed as the Old Stock Exchange and listed as a historic monument on 25th May 1921. The building was restored again 1989-1998 and now serves as a meeting place for booksellers, florists, chess players and tourists.
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| La Vieille Bourse |
Château de Flers, built in the 16th century, the Lille Métropole Museum of Modern Art, Contemporary Art and Art Brut inaugurated in 1983 and the Pierre Mauroy Stadium built in 2012, Villa Carvois, built in 1932 for Roubaix industrialist Paul Carvois. The rural village of Hem, the town of Bouvines, the town of Templeuve-en-Pévèle is a town that has windmil, the town of Pont-à-Marcq, Marchiennes and the Scarpe-Escaut Regional National Park.
Castle Montmorency, was built around 1130. It became a listed historical monument in 1929 and is currently occupied by a work-assistance centre run by ESAT to provide vocational training to handicapped workers, including catering and work with horses and the castle is open to visitors.
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| Castle Monmorency |
The Canal de la Sensée was developed under Napoleon to reduce the distance, by water, from Dunkirk to Cambrai by some 63km. The towns of Wasnes-au-Bac, Hornaing, Wandignies-Hamage and Hasnon before the ends in Arenberg Porte du Hainaut, a town with a rich mining past with 32 million tons of coal being extracted 1899-1989. The former mining site is now a centre of excellence for image and digital media.
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| Arenbery Porte du Hainaut |
Who Won the Stage and Who Won What Jersey
The Stage winner is Simon Clarke for Israel-Premier Tech/ISR
The Yellow Jersey won by Wout van Aert for Jumbo-Visma.
The Green Jersey won by Wout van Aert for Jumbo-Visma.
The Polka Dot Jersey won by Magnus Cort Nielsen for EF Education-Easypost/USA.
The White Jersey won by Tadej Pogacar for UAE Team Emirates.
Combatif Award won by Magnus Cort Nielsen for EF Education-Easypost/USA
Leading team: Ineos-Grenadiers
The Challenge: Lille Métropole is where we start our journey today. Notes from previous stages here include phrases such as 'cobbles', 'very cobbly', 'I need more saddle padding' and 'where is the tarmac' :laugh. Lille has a wealth of history and some beautiful architecture from different time periods; with many cultural hidden gems. For those who want to get their boogie on: dance. Lille has a vibrant night life (though after all those cobbles we'd probably not be in boogie-mode!)
Spin the most bright, vibrant and disco-y fibre you have! If you don't have fibres that fit the bill now is a great chance to use any effect fibres to help brighten things up.
Suggested Fibre: Get your disco on and try Neon by Dave.
What I did
Neon by Dave was on the list of fibres sent out ahead of the TdF so we could get them in if we wanted to. I didn't want to as it's not to my taste. So, I went through my fibre stash and made a few selections and also Googled "disco colours". It seems anything bright and funky basically but I didn't fancy going along the bright orange/red side of things so went with the pinks/purples/blue/green and chose a braid of fibre that I've had a few years. It is a 70% Merino, 30% Bamboo blend that has been handpainted and called "Posy" that I got from Yummy Yarns UK a few years ago.
As the colours were not equally spaced or in similar proportions what I did was to split it into 4 across the length and then put two together, side by side, watching out to try to get different colours next to each other as best as I could and then pre-drafted from both lengths as the same time into my new fibre basket that I am using for spinning.
There were some sections where the colours were almost the same but as it turned out they kind of matched up with the other set of colours when I was plying, so that the long blue/green section from the first single matched up with the long pink/purple section of the second ply and thereby creating a barber pole effect during the plying of the yarn. In other sections the singles were barber-poled already and then plied with more barber poling.
A lot of blue dye was lost during the washing process, which just means it wasn't fixed in properly or that there was an excess of blue dye but I was aware that this would likely happen as my hands turned blue with dye during the spinning process but I have now washed and rinsed the yarn so much that it shouldn't leak any more dye. The finished yarn is double-knit weight and 98g/253m which in terms of the TdF length calculations is 759m - 2 singles plus the plied length = 3 x finished yarn length.
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