- Jul 8, 2017
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Stage 4: Amiens – Rouen (174.2k)
The Tour starts heading south with another good hilly stage, this time paying tribute to champions of bygone days.
Map and profile
e1deb
15d73
Start
The history of Amiens is an ancient one, dating back to before the Roman conquest of Gaul as evidenced by Caesar’s writings. It was likely already the de facto capital of what is now Picardie (or Picardy) in Roman times. Although it was likely the largest town in what is now northern France during the first half of the Middle Ages, Amiens still suffered heavily, being sacked repeatedly first during the Barbaric invasions and then by the Vikings and Normans. Unlike in the regions we have seen so far, strong independent counties never really developed in Picardie, and in Amiens the period of relative independence ended as early as 1077. Aside from intermittent Burgundian rule in the 15th century and a brief Spanish occupation in 1597, it has remained part of France ever since.
The 11th century was also when Amiens entered a new period of prosperity, developing into a major centre of textile production known especially for its blue dye. The heights of this era are reflected by its cathedral, which was built almost entirely in the 13th century and, at twice the volume of the Notre-Dame, remains the single largest cathedral in France. The boom period came to an end in the 14th century, when the Black Death coincided with the Hundred Years’ War wrecking direct havoc and also causing the dye production to shift out of France. Only after the permanent re-establishment of French rule at the end of the 15th century did the textile industry recover. From the Spanish occupation in 1597 to the northward shift of the border sixty years later, Picardie was repeatedly a war theatre, and Amiens suffered accordingly. But every time, the persistent strength of its textile manufacturing helped the city recover. The Industrial Revolution only further developed the industry, and by the start of the 20th century Amiens was among the ten largest cities in France.
During the First World War, Amiens came quite close to being captured during the Somme offensive in 1918, but the German advance was halted about ten kilometres to the city’s east. However, between the bombings sustained in that year and the damage inflicted by the German invasion in 1940, the city suffered quite heavily during the horrors of this period. Overall, the city did not grow as much as many of its counterparts in the 20th century, with the loss of the textile industry upon which it had relied for so long hurting particularly badly. Conversely, more recent decades have seen something of a resurgence, courtesy of a relatively successful transition to a service-based economy. It is also notable for its university, the hospital of which carried out the first-ever partial face transplantation in 2005. In terms of notable residents, it is of course impossible to omit the current French president, Emmanuel Macron, who hails from the city. However, perhaps even more famous is the legendary author Jules Verne (Around the World in Eighty Days, Journey to the Centre of the Earth), who spent the latter half of his life living in Amiens. As for the Tour, this will be the fifteenth visit, and the first since Dylan Groenewegen won the sprint here in 2018.
0_Amiens_-_Place_du_Don_-_Cath%C3%A9drale_%281%29.JPG
(picture by Jean-Paul Grandmont)
The route
The first two-thirds of the stage are pretty much a direct route from Amiens to the Seine, heading through the rolling hills of first Picardie and then Normandie. None of the terrain is particularly difficult, with things like the Côte de Crèvecœur-le-Grand being about as challenging as it gets.
crevecoeur-le-grand-le-gallet.png
The only hill in this section that they could credibly have categorised is the one after 70 kilometres, Côte Blanche.
cote-blanche-avesnes-en-bray.png
By the time the riders reach this climb, they have entered Normandie, which means the Seine isn’t too much further away. The peloton reaches its banks in Les Andelys. Here, the nature of the stage changes, as the remainder is spent repeatedly climbing from the river valley up to the hills above it and then heading back down. Up first is the Côte de Fresne-l'Archevêque (2.3k at 4.4%), of which I don’t have a profile. After a plateau section and a descent, it’s time for the first KOM of the day, Côte Jacques Anquetil. To my surprise, the name actually doesn’t stem from ASO – the first of the five-time Tour winners bought the château on this hill towards the end of his career and spent the twenty or so years that remained to him here, many of them in a sexual relationship with his stepdaughter. There has been a monument to him at the summit of this climb for a long time.
cote-jacques-anquetil.png
After the next descent, it is time for the intermediate sprint in Saint-Adrien.
kB0XpVA.png
isT4jl1.png
And then, things get serious. Not only are the flat sections quite limited in the remaining thirty kilometres, but the climbing also becomes a lot harder. Côte de Belbeuf is nasty – Climbfinder has it as 1.2k at 9.8%, so even a bit steeper than the official profile suggests.
belbeuf-la-poterie.png
Finish
UQL2TfN.png
The next hill is much easier, but also far more historically significant, for one reason only: the climax of the 1947 Tour. It was a strange edition, the first one after the war and with a rather depleted field. It was supposed to be the year when René Vietto, runner-up in the last pre-war edition, finally won, and indeed he was in yellow after the Alps and Pyrenees were done. There was supposed to be one more big GC day… although big might be understating it: it was the longest time trial in Tour history, at no fewer than 139 kilometres. Vietto faltered completely, even falling off the podium, and from there it should have been a straightforward Italian victory with only two stages left to go and Pierre Brambilla and Aldo Ronconi occupying the first two places. However, one man had other ideas. Jean Robic had been twenty-five minutes off the race lead after the Alps, regained much of that time in the Pyrenees and had come within three minutes of the race lead after managing second in that TT despite being about 15 centimetres shorter than Lenny Martinez. The final stage to Paris passed through Rouen and then climbed out of the city via the Côte de Bonsecours. Robic attacked here, and neither Italian saw him again until Paris. Thus, the enfant terrible from Bretagne became the first rider to win the yellow jersey having not ridden in it all race.
In this stage, we are only doing the final kilometre of the profile below, cresting the summit at the monument erected to commemorate Robic’s attack.
cote-de-bonsecours.png
By now, we are well within the Rouen conurbation, and the next climb, Côte de la Grand’Mare, does the unusual thing of taking the race through the banlieues. They ride it in full, but with the KOM before the little dip.
cote-de-grand-mare-darnetal.png
There is one KOM left after this, and it’s a hard one. The Rampe Saint-Hilaire is steep enough as it is, and it’s made more selective by the sharp turn into the steep section as well as the chicane halfway up said section backing into the hardest ramps.
YfISLCI.png
The lowest point of the finale isn’t reached until 790 metres from the line, although the descent has mostly petered out by that point. From there, we have a little dig that lasts until 230 metres to go, where the riders turn right onto the final straight.
zmu8HWh.png
Although Rouen dates back to Roman times, it did not rise to prominence until its capture by the Vikings in the 9th century. In the next generations, the Vikings and the local population then assimilated into one people: the Normans, giving their name to Normandie. When Normandie was established as a duchy in the early 10th century, Rouen became its capital. The Normans soon proved to be among the most powerful people of their age, establishing kingdoms that controlled the southern half of Italy, Tunisia and an array of crusader states in the 11th and 12th centuries. Most famously, they seized the English crown by conquest in 1066, and from then on William the Conqueror and his descendants usually ruled both England and Normandie. Although William moved the Norman capital to Caen, Rouen flourished in this period, reaching 30000 inhabitants as early as the start of the 12th century. Construction of its famous cathedral, briefly the tallest building in the world in the 19th century after the addition of a spire, began in this century. Normandie was eventually annexed by the French crown in 1204 as a part of a larger war with England (that will feature in many of my stage descriptions for this week), but Rouen initially continued to grow larger and richer off the river trade and a burgeoning textile industry.
This golden era was interrupted in the Late Middle Ages. Having already suffered from the Black Death in the 14th century, Rouen was besieged by the English in 1418 and, after tens of thousands of casualties, then occupied between 1419 and the final stages of the Hundred Years’ War in 1449. Famously, Jeanne d’Arc was burned at the stake here in 1431. Rouen wound up rebounding in subsequent centuries, even reclaiming its status as France’s second-largest city. Colour dye and overseas trade (the Seine was navigable for the trading vessels of this age) were added to its economic foundations, and reached 75000 inhabitants in the 16th century. However, from the 17th century onwards, the city stagnated, with the importance of its port declining as ships grew larger. A telling statistic is that the population had only reached 80000 people by 1800, and although remaining the centre of Normandie, Rouen would never be among the foremost cities in France again (it is currently twelfth by urban area population size).
The last 200 years of Rouen’s history have been surprisingly quiet for a city of its stature. There is one major exception to this: in 1944, about half the city was destroyed by Allied bombs. Rather amusingly given that we started in Emmanuel Macron’s hometown, Rouen is the birthplace of his predecessor, François Hollande. In cycling, it is the hometown of Paul Duboc, who looked like he was going to win the 1911 Tour until he accepted a poisoned drinking bottle from a ‘fan’ (to put the issues the sport has with spectators today into perspective). In more recent times, it is also the birthplace of Alexis Gougeard, who has managed to retire the year before the Tour visited his hometown having turned pro two years after the most recent visit in 2012. And of course, Jacques Anquetil was born in one of its suburbs. Tour stages here have tended to be flat affairs: it’s nice to see them finally utilise the full potential of the terrain in and around the city.
2560px-Overview_of_Rouen_20140514_1.jpg
(picture by DXR at Wikimedia Commons)
What to expect?
Pretty similar in terms of difficulty to the second stage, albeit perhaps a little more dependent on tactics to make sure it’s just as selective. Still, it should be mostly the same names that come to play when the hammer inevitably drops on Saint-Hilaire.
The Tour starts heading south with another good hilly stage, this time paying tribute to champions of bygone days.
Map and profile
e1deb
15d73
Start
The history of Amiens is an ancient one, dating back to before the Roman conquest of Gaul as evidenced by Caesar’s writings. It was likely already the de facto capital of what is now Picardie (or Picardy) in Roman times. Although it was likely the largest town in what is now northern France during the first half of the Middle Ages, Amiens still suffered heavily, being sacked repeatedly first during the Barbaric invasions and then by the Vikings and Normans. Unlike in the regions we have seen so far, strong independent counties never really developed in Picardie, and in Amiens the period of relative independence ended as early as 1077. Aside from intermittent Burgundian rule in the 15th century and a brief Spanish occupation in 1597, it has remained part of France ever since.
The 11th century was also when Amiens entered a new period of prosperity, developing into a major centre of textile production known especially for its blue dye. The heights of this era are reflected by its cathedral, which was built almost entirely in the 13th century and, at twice the volume of the Notre-Dame, remains the single largest cathedral in France. The boom period came to an end in the 14th century, when the Black Death coincided with the Hundred Years’ War wrecking direct havoc and also causing the dye production to shift out of France. Only after the permanent re-establishment of French rule at the end of the 15th century did the textile industry recover. From the Spanish occupation in 1597 to the northward shift of the border sixty years later, Picardie was repeatedly a war theatre, and Amiens suffered accordingly. But every time, the persistent strength of its textile manufacturing helped the city recover. The Industrial Revolution only further developed the industry, and by the start of the 20th century Amiens was among the ten largest cities in France.
During the First World War, Amiens came quite close to being captured during the Somme offensive in 1918, but the German advance was halted about ten kilometres to the city’s east. However, between the bombings sustained in that year and the damage inflicted by the German invasion in 1940, the city suffered quite heavily during the horrors of this period. Overall, the city did not grow as much as many of its counterparts in the 20th century, with the loss of the textile industry upon which it had relied for so long hurting particularly badly. Conversely, more recent decades have seen something of a resurgence, courtesy of a relatively successful transition to a service-based economy. It is also notable for its university, the hospital of which carried out the first-ever partial face transplantation in 2005. In terms of notable residents, it is of course impossible to omit the current French president, Emmanuel Macron, who hails from the city. However, perhaps even more famous is the legendary author Jules Verne (Around the World in Eighty Days, Journey to the Centre of the Earth), who spent the latter half of his life living in Amiens. As for the Tour, this will be the fifteenth visit, and the first since Dylan Groenewegen won the sprint here in 2018.
0_Amiens_-_Place_du_Don_-_Cath%C3%A9drale_%281%29.JPG
(picture by Jean-Paul Grandmont)
The route
The first two-thirds of the stage are pretty much a direct route from Amiens to the Seine, heading through the rolling hills of first Picardie and then Normandie. None of the terrain is particularly difficult, with things like the Côte de Crèvecœur-le-Grand being about as challenging as it gets.
crevecoeur-le-grand-le-gallet.png
The only hill in this section that they could credibly have categorised is the one after 70 kilometres, Côte Blanche.
cote-blanche-avesnes-en-bray.png
By the time the riders reach this climb, they have entered Normandie, which means the Seine isn’t too much further away. The peloton reaches its banks in Les Andelys. Here, the nature of the stage changes, as the remainder is spent repeatedly climbing from the river valley up to the hills above it and then heading back down. Up first is the Côte de Fresne-l'Archevêque (2.3k at 4.4%), of which I don’t have a profile. After a plateau section and a descent, it’s time for the first KOM of the day, Côte Jacques Anquetil. To my surprise, the name actually doesn’t stem from ASO – the first of the five-time Tour winners bought the château on this hill towards the end of his career and spent the twenty or so years that remained to him here, many of them in a sexual relationship with his stepdaughter. There has been a monument to him at the summit of this climb for a long time.
cote-jacques-anquetil.png
After the next descent, it is time for the intermediate sprint in Saint-Adrien.
kB0XpVA.png
isT4jl1.png
And then, things get serious. Not only are the flat sections quite limited in the remaining thirty kilometres, but the climbing also becomes a lot harder. Côte de Belbeuf is nasty – Climbfinder has it as 1.2k at 9.8%, so even a bit steeper than the official profile suggests.
belbeuf-la-poterie.png
Finish
UQL2TfN.png
The next hill is much easier, but also far more historically significant, for one reason only: the climax of the 1947 Tour. It was a strange edition, the first one after the war and with a rather depleted field. It was supposed to be the year when René Vietto, runner-up in the last pre-war edition, finally won, and indeed he was in yellow after the Alps and Pyrenees were done. There was supposed to be one more big GC day… although big might be understating it: it was the longest time trial in Tour history, at no fewer than 139 kilometres. Vietto faltered completely, even falling off the podium, and from there it should have been a straightforward Italian victory with only two stages left to go and Pierre Brambilla and Aldo Ronconi occupying the first two places. However, one man had other ideas. Jean Robic had been twenty-five minutes off the race lead after the Alps, regained much of that time in the Pyrenees and had come within three minutes of the race lead after managing second in that TT despite being about 15 centimetres shorter than Lenny Martinez. The final stage to Paris passed through Rouen and then climbed out of the city via the Côte de Bonsecours. Robic attacked here, and neither Italian saw him again until Paris. Thus, the enfant terrible from Bretagne became the first rider to win the yellow jersey having not ridden in it all race.
In this stage, we are only doing the final kilometre of the profile below, cresting the summit at the monument erected to commemorate Robic’s attack.
cote-de-bonsecours.png
By now, we are well within the Rouen conurbation, and the next climb, Côte de la Grand’Mare, does the unusual thing of taking the race through the banlieues. They ride it in full, but with the KOM before the little dip.
cote-de-grand-mare-darnetal.png
There is one KOM left after this, and it’s a hard one. The Rampe Saint-Hilaire is steep enough as it is, and it’s made more selective by the sharp turn into the steep section as well as the chicane halfway up said section backing into the hardest ramps.
YfISLCI.png
The lowest point of the finale isn’t reached until 790 metres from the line, although the descent has mostly petered out by that point. From there, we have a little dig that lasts until 230 metres to go, where the riders turn right onto the final straight.
zmu8HWh.png
Although Rouen dates back to Roman times, it did not rise to prominence until its capture by the Vikings in the 9th century. In the next generations, the Vikings and the local population then assimilated into one people: the Normans, giving their name to Normandie. When Normandie was established as a duchy in the early 10th century, Rouen became its capital. The Normans soon proved to be among the most powerful people of their age, establishing kingdoms that controlled the southern half of Italy, Tunisia and an array of crusader states in the 11th and 12th centuries. Most famously, they seized the English crown by conquest in 1066, and from then on William the Conqueror and his descendants usually ruled both England and Normandie. Although William moved the Norman capital to Caen, Rouen flourished in this period, reaching 30000 inhabitants as early as the start of the 12th century. Construction of its famous cathedral, briefly the tallest building in the world in the 19th century after the addition of a spire, began in this century. Normandie was eventually annexed by the French crown in 1204 as a part of a larger war with England (that will feature in many of my stage descriptions for this week), but Rouen initially continued to grow larger and richer off the river trade and a burgeoning textile industry.
This golden era was interrupted in the Late Middle Ages. Having already suffered from the Black Death in the 14th century, Rouen was besieged by the English in 1418 and, after tens of thousands of casualties, then occupied between 1419 and the final stages of the Hundred Years’ War in 1449. Famously, Jeanne d’Arc was burned at the stake here in 1431. Rouen wound up rebounding in subsequent centuries, even reclaiming its status as France’s second-largest city. Colour dye and overseas trade (the Seine was navigable for the trading vessels of this age) were added to its economic foundations, and reached 75000 inhabitants in the 16th century. However, from the 17th century onwards, the city stagnated, with the importance of its port declining as ships grew larger. A telling statistic is that the population had only reached 80000 people by 1800, and although remaining the centre of Normandie, Rouen would never be among the foremost cities in France again (it is currently twelfth by urban area population size).
The last 200 years of Rouen’s history have been surprisingly quiet for a city of its stature. There is one major exception to this: in 1944, about half the city was destroyed by Allied bombs. Rather amusingly given that we started in Emmanuel Macron’s hometown, Rouen is the birthplace of his predecessor, François Hollande. In cycling, it is the hometown of Paul Duboc, who looked like he was going to win the 1911 Tour until he accepted a poisoned drinking bottle from a ‘fan’ (to put the issues the sport has with spectators today into perspective). In more recent times, it is also the birthplace of Alexis Gougeard, who has managed to retire the year before the Tour visited his hometown having turned pro two years after the most recent visit in 2012. And of course, Jacques Anquetil was born in one of its suburbs. Tour stages here have tended to be flat affairs: it’s nice to see them finally utilise the full potential of the terrain in and around the city.
2560px-Overview_of_Rouen_20140514_1.jpg
(picture by DXR at Wikimedia Commons)
What to expect?
Pretty similar in terms of difficulty to the second stage, albeit perhaps a little more dependent on tactics to make sure it’s just as selective. Still, it should be mostly the same names that come to play when the hammer inevitably drops on Saint-Hilaire.
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