Like before a trip through the beautiful French landscape. However the map didn’t show a lot of hills, in real life the situation was quite different: several short and tough ascents and a lot of long, almost unnoticeable descents. The sun is shining without mercy and the temperature increases over thirty degrees. On top of this a rather hard, warm wind is blowing from the wrong direction, which causes the average not to get much higher than 30 km/h.

The stage of today isn’t in the official trips of the Tour the France. Normally we would drive from St. Amand Montrond to Orleans. Derk decides to compensate the missed kilometres on flat terrain and the shorter final stage to Paris of Wednesday by means of an extra stage.