Tourist guide

• BOURG D’OISANS
  This commune’ history is tied to the Tour de France. It is at the foot of the climb to Alpe d’Huez, and where one of the race’s highlights typically starts. It is also the town of mineralogy.
• VIZILLE (km 28,5)
  Château de Vizille provided the backdrop for one of the French Revolution’s turning points on 21 July 1789, when members of the three orders convened to kick-start the fiscal and political reform.
• GRENOBLE (km 43)
  The museum here features one of France’s most impressive collections, spanning classical painting, contemporary art and everything inbetween – plus a number of Egyptian antiques.
• SAINT-ÉTIENNE
  This industrial city was long France’s weapon-production capital. It has now become a trailblazing design hotspot.

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Chantal Montellier, a cartoon artist and a scriptwriter, was born in 1947 near Saint-Étienne. She also draws for newspapers and magazines, and spent seven years at the Saint-Étienne School of Fine Arts.

«As it turned out, my grandfather was a cyclist and also a champion! There was actually a prize named after him (the Louis Montellier trophy). He was also an opportunist. He made it into the middle class by taking the place of a soldier who had fallen in Verdun. That unfortunate man’s widow, Maria Guichard, owned a gleaming bakery and pastry shop in the centre of town, near the “Place Dorian”.

Her new husband, however, knew nothing about choux pastry so they swapped their establishment for a bicycle shop and pompously called it the “Palais des Sports”. Period adverts read, “Ravat bicycles and motorbikes, articles for all sports disciplines, supplies and accessories, credit sales. Bergougnou, Michelin, Hutchinson, Dunlop and other tyres. Trustworthy.»

While Maria was selling bicycles, motorbikes, sewing machines and toy cars, Louis was organising races – if not racing in them himself. Which was fair enough: one worked, the other one played. That lasted until… 1968.»