Stage 5 – Into Alsace

Stage 5 – Into Alsace

Saint-Die-des-Vosges to Colmar

A medium distance ride for Tony today at 175.5km. Don’t let the distance fool you though as this is a hilly stage with 4 categorised climbs and the first category 2 climbs of Le Tour. For the uninitiated there are 5 categories of climb on Le Tour, categories 1 to 4 with 1 being the hardest and 4 being the easiest and a special category, Hors Categorie, reserved for those climbs that are “beyond categorisation” i.e. the hardest climbs on Le tour. The category is decided by the length, steepness and how far into the stage the climb is. I’ll give more detail on this in later posts.

One of the category 2 climbs, the Cote du Haut-Koenigsbourg is the site of the Chateau du Haut-Koeinigsburg, an impressive medieval castle restored under commission from Kaiser Wilhelm II von Hohenzollern at the beginning of the 20^th Century. Whilst the castle will remain open to visitors when Tony passes, it will be closed when the laggards on Le Tour pass by in a week’s time!

Two notable people have links to the this stage of Le Tour:

• Frederic Auguste Bartholdi – the designer of Liberty Enlightening the World, better know as the Statue of Liberty
• The Night Watchman of Turckheim – a native of the village of Turckheim who, dressed in traditional costume and carrying a halberd, still makes rounds at 10pm each night to protect the village. He, no doubt, scares away would be intruders with his renditions of old Alsatian songs!

Drink of the day couldn’t be anything other than a classis gewürztraminer from the region – Cave de Turckheim Gewürztraminer

Song for the day – Non, je ne regrette rien by Edith Piaf