A firewoman, perched on the back of a slow-moving float, hoses a cloud of mist over the fans at the roadside. “Merci!” they call back. Most return a grin and a thumbs-up, too. Under the baking sun in Carcassonne, as the riders arrive to sign on for stage four of the Tour de France, even a second of coolness feels like bliss.
The float then trundles on, and the heat feels inescapable again. It blazes from above, rises up from the tarmac, and sears with each gust of wind, like a blast from a hairdryer. Visma-Lease a Bike’s bus is nowhere to be seen – its air conditioning unit has broken, and the driver has had to make an emergency trip to the garage. Their riders turn up to the start on their bikes, some in ice vests, in a hopeful bid to fend off one of the harshest heatwaves France has ever felt.
