George's Grand Tour Read Online Free PDF

elderly people to lose the plot eventually, and he tried to go back to sleep in order to banish this depressing thought. He was going to have to break it to Charles that they weren’t going. But before he could think of how to do it, Charles was back. His hip must have been in a frightfully good mood that day.
    â€˜It works, dammit, it works! I’ll explain it to you.’
    Adèle could call him at home all she liked; she’d never know a thing! They were free to do the Tour in peace. Charles initiated George into the mysteries of call diversion, and while he wasabout it, the wonderful world of modern communication in general – in such depth and detail that his veal and carrots were put in the fridge in a Tupperware container, along with his salad and his rice pudding. He even missed his Ricoré coffee and his four o’clock hot chocolate … His boyish enthusiasm had triumphed over his stomach and most importantly, it had silenced George’s voices. They had gone quiet out of politeness. Because voices can torment a man, drive him mad with doubt and sing the praises of laziness and cowardice. But they know not to get in the way of neighbours.
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    Six days later, a metallic blue Renault Scenic with satnav and sunroof was approaching the bend in the tree-lined road in Chanteloup, sparkling in the proud late September sun. In the rear-view mirror, George watched Charles’s family waving them off. He saw Thérèse wipe away a tear as the house where he had lived for eighty-three years became smaller and smaller, until it had disappeared entirely behind the trees. His chest felt heavy and there was a lump in his throat, but he had no regrets. As for Charles, he was driving with one hand and waving the other out of the window, and looked utterly ecstatic. With one hundred and fifty-nine years between them, they set off on the Tour de France.

Thursday 25 September
    Chanteloup (Deux-Sèvres)–Notre-Damede-Monts (Vendée)
    Their epic journey in the Renault Scenic was to follow the itinerary of the 2008 Tour de France to the letter. This was made up of twenty-one stages (except that George and Charles’s Tour would leave out stage 4, as they had decided not to count the individual time trial in Cholet). They had given themselves two or three days to complete each stage, so that they could explore the surrounding area a little. But they were to change hotel almost every night. Their route was planned out as follows:
    Stage 1: Brest–Plumelec
    Stage 2: Auray–Saint-Brieuc
    Stage 3: Saint-Malo–Nantes
    Stage 5: Cholet–Châteauroux
    Stage 6: Aigurande–Super-Besse
    Stage 7: Brioude–Aurillac
    Stage 8: Figeac–Toulouse
    Stage 9: Toulouse–Bagnères-de-Bigorre
    Stage 10: Pau–Hautacam
    Stage 11: Lannemezan–Foix
    Stage 12: Lavelanet–Narbonne
    Stage 13: Narbonne–Nîmes
    Stage 14: Nîmes–Digne-les-Bains
    Stage 15: Embrun–Prato Nevoso
    Stage 16: Cuneo–Jausiers
    Stage 17: Embrun–L’Alpe-d’Huez
    Stage 18: Le Bourg-d’Oisans–Saint-Étienne
    Stage 19: Roanne–Montluçon
    Stage 20: Cérilly–Saint-Amand-Montrond
    Stage 21: Étampes–Paris Champs-Élysées
    Three extra stages had been added to take them from Chanteloup to the official starting point at Brest – which, as Charles pointed out, was ‘a heck of a way away’. He had called them stage 0 (Chanteloup–Notre-Dame-de-Monts, staying with Charles’s sister, Ginette Bruneau), stage 0a (Notre-Dame-de-Monts–Gâvres, overnighting with Charles’s cousin Odette Fonteneau), and finally stage 0b (Gâvres–Brest).
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    They started by taking the first turn out of Chanteloup. As they went, the little roads with dandelions growing in the cracks were replaced by roads whose surface had been fixed so often it resembled a tarmac patchwork. They passed many familiar names on the rusty signposts: La