Читать книгу One More Croissant for the Road онлайн

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As a result, I never watch the Tour on TV without a large box of chocolates; though I’m no sports fan, it has a nostalgic pull for me. The occasionally excitable, generally soporific commentary was the soundtrack to the summer holidays of my childhood, turned up loud in the campsite bar to compete with the thwack of plastic on rubber and the squealing ruckus around the babyfoot table. Those endless afternoons eating Mr Freeze lollies and waiting for a turn at ping-pong have left me with a lifelong weakness for men in Lycra and cycling’s most famous race.

The glorious backdrops are a part of it, of course: no one who spent every childhood summer somewhere in l’hexagone can be entirely immune to the attractions of a neat Norman village flashing by at speed, or indeed one of those endless straight routes départementales flanked with poplars and enormous billboards for thrillingly large hypermarchés ‘à gauche au feu’. I see France zip past behind the riders, and my heart aches for it – for the landscapes and people, the Orangina and bad pop music, and most of all, for its glorious, glorious food.