Historic Tour de France Route

[cymro49]

Hi,
I am planning a trip that would see me following the original Tour de France route of 1903. Basically, it ran from the outskirts of Paris down to Lyon and Marseilles and then west to Narbonne, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes and back to Paris.There are a couple of very basic maps of the route on Wikipedia. I understand that a lot of the original routes may have disappeared underneath new highways. If anyone has done the route or could direct me to some other sites whereby I could get more detailed maps, I would really appreciate it.
Jeff, Canada

[thirdcrank]

The TdeF is now owned by Amaury Sport or ASO.

AFAIK, there's been a direct line of ownership going right back to Henri Desgrange and L'Auto. If anybody has old records, I'd expect it to be them, but it's a big, commercial organisation.

http://www.aso.fr/us/homepage.html

Bear in mind that the original version of the race was run over something like five days, so we'd expect the same of you, especially on a modern bike with lighter tyres and derailleurs.

[cymro49]

Thanks for this. The original race was run over six stages and seventeen days which is incredible given the machinery and road conditions. If they failed to finish a stage they could still continue the next day - and smoke cigarettes as they rode! Hilarious!

[thirdcrank]

I think another point to bear in mind is that, afaik, there was no fixed route in the early editions in the sense that we understand it today. This was above all an endurance event. The stage towns were principle cities around France and the riders were expected to ride from one to another, with a few controls (some secret) along the way to prevent cheating. You should appreciate that before the era of the autoroutes there was a network of generally straight main roads lined with plane trees connecting the urban centres of France. I doubt if there would have been any reason in those early years to have raced on any but those main roads. I suspect that if you were to get a map of France from that period, the race route would be clear. I thgink these historic main roads have been the subject of various "improvements" including the wholesale removal of the plane trees, because of their unforgiving nature when vehicles, especially tinny ones like 2CV's, crashed into them.

[cymro49]

Yes, some good points covered there. I know that it won't be possible to retrace the original route exactly so the overall 'general' direction using what were main roads would suffice. Thanks again!

[jamesgilbert]

Someone did this last summer. I don't know how much effort they put into following the exact route, but the website has detailed OpenRunner routes for the 6 stages:

Paris-Lyon : 467km
Lyon-Marseille : 374km
Marseille-Toulouse : 423km
Toulouse-Bordeaux : 268km
Bordeaux-Nantes : 425km
Nantes-Paris : 471km

http://www.surlaroutedupremiertour.com/#parcours

Good luck!

[cymro49]

Thanks so much! This is just what I was looking for!

[james-o]

Hi Jeff, I have a book including all the early TdF routes - I want to ride a full TdF loop as a tour one day too. I can post up a pic as a guide if you like? Probably no more detail than you have now but may be of interest.

[cymro49]

Hi James
Yes, that would be great. Thank you. There are illustrations on the 'net taken from the front page of the newspaper L'Auto in 1903. It shows the route with enough detail that I could probably tie in with a modern map. The problem is, every image of it I've come across is too small and the print detail is unclear. Cheers!

[james-o]

Sorry for the delay. the 1903 and other earlier routes are not as detailed as the more recent routes in the book unfortunately.

[cymro49]

Hi James
Thanks for your time in posting this. It's a big help!

[LWaB]

L'Union des Audax Francaise organised an Audax in 2003 that basically followed the original route and a similar timeframe. Only 1 or 2 Brits rode. It was a group of about 100 riders with lead and follow cars, scheduled at 22.5km/h riding average, so the mostly major roads weren't too much of a hassle. If you contact the UAF President (Jean-Michel Vincelot speaks English well), they may be able to provide the route they used.

There are also some permanent brevets called the Tour de France which stick much closer to the borders and coasts. US Metro version is about 5,000km in about 3 weeks. Sections of the route are quite similar to the Raid Pyrenean and Randonnee Alpine.

[cymro49]

Hadn't thought about the Audax in 2003. I do remember reading about it at the time. Thanks for jogging my memory. I'll contact them.