intimately than the sudden super-climber. We could relax now, and watch him lose the lead. His point had been made. Splendidly made.
He’ll be back of course next year. Voeckler will lead his team across the month of July one more time, maybe once again in the colours of the French National champion, which he has worn with great élan (obviously, a French word works best in this sentence). And I am certain that he will be fêted (and there’s another one) as he slips by stealth into a neatly composed breakaway on Stage 13 and is outsprinted by somebody from the Czech Republic with an unmemorable name. Perhaps we’ll shout his name when he launches an absurdly overambitious attack on the peloton from twelve kilometres out. He can spend the remaining years of his career fostering the prodigious talent of Pierre Rolland, who may well win the Tour for the French before too long. And in doing so, we will witness his talent slowly fading until it disappears from the canvas of the Tour entirely, at which point he will take his rightful place as a stalwart of France Télévisions. I’ve got it all planned out for him, you see. He won’t wear the yellow jersey again, though.
* * *
‘This far. But no further’ was a concept young Simon Carnochan singularly failed to understand.
‘What is it you’re planning to do?’ I’d foolishly asked him back in June.
‘Hitchhike round the route of the Tour de France.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I want to hitchhike, um, round the route of the Tour de France.’
‘Yes, I know. That’s what you said.’
I paused to let this mad idea take shape in my imagination. It wouldn’t. I needed more detail.
‘How are you going to get to the start? It’s a long way away, the Vendée.’
‘I’m going to hitchhike.’
‘Why?’
‘Just to see if I can, really.’
This had been my first meeting with the unusual eighteen-year-old Simon Carnochan. I say meeting, but actually we were just speaking over Skype. I had been reluctant to make my number known by ringing him from my mobile or landline for fear he would prove to be a maniac. I was only semi-wrong. He did indeed prove to be a maniac. But not an axe-wielder. More an arch-blagger.
Simon had told me that he was taking time out after A levels before starting at college. Hitchhiking round France had come to him in a flash of inspiration watching telly one day. Such things, it seems, are indeed possible. I suspect that Simon watches an unhealthy amount of televised sport. He seems to know all about it. He wasn’t setting out with the aim of raising money for charity, but to test his powers of endurance. He simply wanted to see if it might not be fun.
At his age, I had completed a few epic hikes around Europe, and found that I was always being helped out by drivers who told me that, ‘At your age, I completed a few epic hikes around Europe.’ It’s a generational thing, a self-feeding mutually assured system. It’s how hitching works. One day, Simon Carnochan, sliding into whatever dysfunctionality middle age blesses him with and in an effort to reconnect with his reckless youth, will doubtless pull over without hesitation at the sight of some weedy chancer with a cardboard sign, or its Bluetooth equivalent, by a motorway slip road. And so it will continue.
I liked his story. I didn’t believe it would be possible, but I liked it.
‘OK. Keep in touch. Come and say hello at the finish line, if you get there. Good luck.’ I hung up, with Skype’s trademark swoosh, shook my head, and wondered briefly if I’d ever speak to him again.
By the time we had driven up to the top of the Mûr-de-Bretagne several weeks later, parked up in a ploughed field and trudged through the raincloud that shrouded the finish line towards our truck, I had long forgotten our conversation. It had been quite washed away by the more immediate demands of covering the race. I had consigned young Mr Carnochan to the notional and overflowing in-tray
He’ll be back of course next year. Voeckler will lead his team across the month of July one more time, maybe once again in the colours of the French National champion, which he has worn with great élan (obviously, a French word works best in this sentence). And I am certain that he will be fêted (and there’s another one) as he slips by stealth into a neatly composed breakaway on Stage 13 and is outsprinted by somebody from the Czech Republic with an unmemorable name. Perhaps we’ll shout his name when he launches an absurdly overambitious attack on the peloton from twelve kilometres out. He can spend the remaining years of his career fostering the prodigious talent of Pierre Rolland, who may well win the Tour for the French before too long. And in doing so, we will witness his talent slowly fading until it disappears from the canvas of the Tour entirely, at which point he will take his rightful place as a stalwart of France Télévisions. I’ve got it all planned out for him, you see. He won’t wear the yellow jersey again, though.
* * *
‘This far. But no further’ was a concept young Simon Carnochan singularly failed to understand.
‘What is it you’re planning to do?’ I’d foolishly asked him back in June.
‘Hitchhike round the route of the Tour de France.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I want to hitchhike, um, round the route of the Tour de France.’
‘Yes, I know. That’s what you said.’
I paused to let this mad idea take shape in my imagination. It wouldn’t. I needed more detail.
‘How are you going to get to the start? It’s a long way away, the Vendée.’
‘I’m going to hitchhike.’
‘Why?’
‘Just to see if I can, really.’
This had been my first meeting with the unusual eighteen-year-old Simon Carnochan. I say meeting, but actually we were just speaking over Skype. I had been reluctant to make my number known by ringing him from my mobile or landline for fear he would prove to be a maniac. I was only semi-wrong. He did indeed prove to be a maniac. But not an axe-wielder. More an arch-blagger.
Simon had told me that he was taking time out after A levels before starting at college. Hitchhiking round France had come to him in a flash of inspiration watching telly one day. Such things, it seems, are indeed possible. I suspect that Simon watches an unhealthy amount of televised sport. He seems to know all about it. He wasn’t setting out with the aim of raising money for charity, but to test his powers of endurance. He simply wanted to see if it might not be fun.
At his age, I had completed a few epic hikes around Europe, and found that I was always being helped out by drivers who told me that, ‘At your age, I completed a few epic hikes around Europe.’ It’s a generational thing, a self-feeding mutually assured system. It’s how hitching works. One day, Simon Carnochan, sliding into whatever dysfunctionality middle age blesses him with and in an effort to reconnect with his reckless youth, will doubtless pull over without hesitation at the sight of some weedy chancer with a cardboard sign, or its Bluetooth equivalent, by a motorway slip road. And so it will continue.
I liked his story. I didn’t believe it would be possible, but I liked it.
‘OK. Keep in touch. Come and say hello at the finish line, if you get there. Good luck.’ I hung up, with Skype’s trademark swoosh, shook my head, and wondered briefly if I’d ever speak to him again.
By the time we had driven up to the top of the Mûr-de-Bretagne several weeks later, parked up in a ploughed field and trudged through the raincloud that shrouded the finish line towards our truck, I had long forgotten our conversation. It had been quite washed away by the more immediate demands of covering the race. I had consigned young Mr Carnochan to the notional and overflowing in-tray
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