Yesterday's Dauphine (warm-up for the Tour de France) stage, four riders in the echappee still have 7'30" advance on the peleton at this point, going through the village of Malaucene in the Vaucluse prior to the climb up the Mont Ventoux (south face). They are the Frenchman Christophe Kern (Cofidis), Spaniards José Luis Arrieta (AG2R La Mondiale) and Alan Perez (Euskaltel), and the Belgian Frederik Willems (Liquigas), for any cycling fans... they soon get caught by the main bunch though, some 20kms before the summit.
Click on any photos in this post to see the full size versions...
More shots from an interesting day... Malaucene until April 1st (some choice of date) had France's oldest operational paper mill, nearly five centuries since it first began to produce paper. Taken over by American group Schweitzer-Mauduit (perhaps that should be "maudit") in 1920, it has been losing money for years now. Lack of investment, and the writing was on the wall in 2005 when the Group opened its China factory having invested 100 million US in its construction. Making exactly the same product. Cheap Asian labour, sign of the times, but where will it all end up?
Police clear the way through the paper mill demonstrators for the Dauphine racers...
Bernard Thevenet stops to chat to journalists and demonstrators in Malaucene. He's aged a bit since his glory days. Suppose most here haven't heard of him
I kept expecting this guy to topple over ...
Or this one...