Of settees, soap, washing lines and champions

Bertis, Villeréal, Doudrac, Cavarc, Boisse, Monmadiès, St-Aubin, St-Germain, Mouleydier, Galtan, Lamonzie, Montastruc, St-Martin-des-Combes, Douville, Villamblard

In the middle of this field, in the middle of nowhere, was a stone settee...

...And it was for sale, according to the smaller stone by the roadside. Buyer to collect, presumably.

In the way some people find things to worry about that never occurred to others, there was a discussion a while back about the best soap to use after cycling. The list of trade names was bewildering.

Well, I have a simpler solution. I use what other people leave behind. So many people leave shampoo bottles - sometimes nearly full ones - that I could tour the world without spending a centime on suds.

Today, though, life took a further happy twist. We acquired a whole new washing line. We could have bought one, of course, but that's not the point. It's serendipity that counts.

I don't know about you, but we use an elasticated line of two strands which wind around each other. At each end is a hook. You clip the line to branches and poke whatever you want to dry into the twines of the line. That saves bringing clothes pegs. The trouble is that you need trees spaced to the length of your line. And they rarely are. Which is why today was an instant success the moment I noticed a former camper had left his line in place. Now my washing could stretch to frightening new lengths.

I asked the people on the neighbouring site, of course. They said it wasn't theirs. They said it in Dutch. We are still meeting almost only Dutch people. There were so many Dutch folk on the site last night that the first words of any conversation were always in Dutch and not French or English.

We even met two more Frankrijkweg riders, less talkative but convinced from the start that we too must be Dutch because we were riding bikes.

This, our second day, has been through beautiful, narrow roads flanked by more sunflowers, by corn - much of it now cropped - and the mysterious shapes of plants grown for cattle food. It's been hot again and it grew hotter all day. The thermometer on my bike computer has never struck me as accurate but it was persistently up above 32 and I was prepared to believe it.

It's hard to tell you where we went because we went through nowhere at all. Nowhere you'd find without searching your map, anyway. We stocked up on lunch at Villeréal, if that means anything to you, and for the rest of the day I don't suppose we rode through any village of more than 150 people. It was paradise.

It was hilly, too. After 75km we had climbed 690 metres, which isn't leg-breaking but, given the altitude gain comes in repeated grimps, has a sapping effect on the will and the legs when you're pulling four panniers and a tent.

At Douville we emerged blinking on to a busier road and, turning right, spotted a small hotel. I am all for small hotels in cases of emergency - which I could persuade myself this was - but my conscience demands I at least try for something simpler.

Outside the hotel was a man with a small boy. Both were on bicycles. Or the man was, anyway, because before our eyes the boy had ventured into the road, changed his mind, turned a half-circle and fallen off. He lay on the road assuring us that this was nothing unusual in his case, to which his father gave unspoken agreement. He was more concerned with helping us than rescuing his gravity-stricken son.

"Camp site?" he said. "Yes, there's a camp site. You see that hill? It's up there. You can't see it from here because that house is in the way. It's a nice site, but watch out... It's full of Dutch."

We set off and a few metres later found a sign pointing not up the hill but along a road to the left.

'"Villamblard camping", it said. Ten kilometres as far as I remember.

Instant powwow. Still OK for another 10km? Yes? Decision made: Villamblard.

We made the right choice. Just before the town, on the left, was a happy, down-to-earth site with a fully-fledged, bright-yellow racing bike in reception. Nobody to guard it but a sign suggesting we go a bit further and see if anybody was chez lui in the mobile home up the path.

There was. There was a bright, bubbly woman and a lean, blond-haired man with shaved legs and the sort of thighs you don't get standing about in bars.

"You're very unkind to your wife," he told me the first chance he got. "You've got smaller chainrings than she has."

"Et vous avez sans doute compté mes sacoches?" ("And I suppose you've counted my bags?")

I have four, and the tent, while Steph has two.

The man's wife chortled. My own wife, showing no marital allegiance at all, told the shaven one "his back bags are nearly empty and my own panniers are bigger anyway." Divorce courts have been engaged for treachery less than that...

This wasn't the moment to fall out, however. This was the moment the Tour de France was on the Champs Elysées and the only television on the site was in this couple's house. Only a cyclist would understand. We were invited in.

"That's home to us," the woman said as the peloton swung on to the Champs for the first time. (Pelotons never "take bends", they always "swing"; it is an obligatory part of sports reporting.) "We used to live in Paris. I used to ride my bike everywhere. It's flat. Here, the hills kill me in an instant. And the heat."

Thank heavens someone has finally pointed out the connection...

The couple had twins. The daughter was out playing with customers' children in the pool but the son wasn't going to be kept from the Tour.

"He came second in the Dordogne championship," the father said proudly. He got out some pictures and showed them. "I should have more," he said, " but I'm so busy shouting 'Allez! Allez!' that I forget about the camera."

Like all parents they're sure their son will be a champion. Perhaps he will. He's already got real cyclist's legs, even at 10.

"Come on Cofidis!" the son shouted as Sylvain Chavanel made a last desperate attempt to fly the tricolour on the Champs. (Another sportswriting hint: nobody is allowed simply to "try": all efforts must be "desperate" and preferably "last-minute".)

"Is he your favourite?"

"No, Cédric Vasseur is," the boy said.

"He got his picture taken with him at a criterium last season," the father explained. "He was the only spectator there in the same jersey and so Vasseur went over to him and gave him his autograph."

Loyalties are thin, however. In the morning, he was wearing an orange and white Euskatel jersey and shorts. He and his father were off for a ride together.

"We bought his bike on e-bay," the mother said. "It's not new and it's not the top of the range but it's fine for him. Some parents are crazy. One of the boys he races against rides a bike that costs thousands. Well, that's OK for my husband. He's not going to grow out of it, is he? You have to have a sense of proportion about these things."

We rode out of the camp ground with waves all round.

"Allez, mon petit champion!" I said to the boy.

"Watch out for his name in the results," his mother shouted back. "He's going to be a star."

The name was Lecointre. If you spot it in the Tour in another dozen years, that's the one.

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