While the Tour de France sets off from Florence, Italy, on June 29, 2024, Christian Le Goff completed his on June 20: 4,234 km covered alone in five weeks, at the age of 68. This cycling enthusiast welcomed us to Quimper, in Finistère, in its “bicycle museum”, to talk about this journey through France, its geography and its history.
At first glance, it looks like an ordinary garden shed, with its varnished wood and small-paned windows. Before pushing open the door, Christian Le Goff turns around. “Did anyone tell you I have a museum?”
Inside, the sharp figure of the sixty-year-old walks passionately among the carefully lined up bicycles and mopeds. On the wall, a Wehrmacht bicycle, with its poncho on the handlebars, its ammunition box, its gas mask, its Mauser rifle holster. Here a Peugeot from 1920, there an Automoto from the 1930s and, at the end of the row, “the bike I rode my Tour de France”, indicates this resident of Quimper (Finistère).
4,234 kilometers across France covered in just five weeks, between May 15 and June 20, 2024, at a rate of 100 to 160 kilometers per day. On the soundboard “bicycle museum”the fruit of fifteen years of accumulation, the president of the association “Vélo Vintage” unfolds a road map. His eyes, the same blue as his polo shirt marked “Cyclos Randonneurs Quimper Cornouaille” (CRQC), a club of which he is an active member, follow the route of his journey marked by a yellow line drawn in fluorescent.
In the footsteps of Maupassant, Verne and Rimbaud
Mûr-de-Bretagne (Côtes-d’Armor), Combourg (Ille-et-Vilaine), Flers (Orne), Dieppe (Seine-Maritime)… The route goes back north to Abbeville (Somme), before turn east, clockwise “because it is also the direction of the prevailing winds”explains the seasoned cyclist. To justify his challenge, Christian Le Goff calls upon the memory of the two founding presidents of the CRQC, created in 1968, who took part in the Tour de France cyclotouriste: 5,500 km to swallow up in one month. “I preferred to do a Tour in my own way, visiting places of interest. »
Passionate about history and literature, he follows in the footsteps of Maupassant in Normandy, Jules Verne in Crotoy (Somme), Rimbaud in Charleville-Mézières (Ardennes) and even Alain Fournier, who fell on the front of the First World War in the Meuse. His passage among military cemeteries marks him. “I went to the place where my grandfather was posted and I discovered that it was close to where Alain Fournier died.” He assures us that to complete a Tour de France, having good legs is not enough: “You have to love France, its geography and its history. »
“I couldn’t feel my feet or my hands anymore.”
His journey continued south, passing through the Jura, crossed in terrible conditions. “It was no more than five degrees. Rain all the time, on the verge of snow. The second day, I no longer felt my feet or my hands. I asked the hotelier to take my phone because I couldn’t use my fingers anymore. » On WhatsAppthe one who likes to put down on paper what his walks inspire in him sends photos and little comments to his loved ones.
Christian Le Goff avoids the Alps, skirting the Rhône, then the Pyrenees, to preserve himself. With six months of training, a Paris-Brest-Paris, a Bordeaux-Paris and several diagonals under his belt, the man knows how to manage his effort, the equivalent of 7,000 calories spent each day. “You have to learn to know yourself, with experience you know when your body is at its limit. It starts with a loss of morale. You don’t want to do it anymore.”
Read also: These Quimperois completed the legendary Paris-Brest-Paris
“The consecration of my career as a cycle tourist”
He only experienced this slump once, on the lonely roads of Artois. “I couldn’t find anything to eat, I was ‘craving’. If there is one thing I have discovered, it is that certain corners of France are desert. We spend the day crossing villages and factories, shops, bistros… Everything is closed! There are just pizza vending machines…”
A few encounters punctuate his journey, but the solitude does not bother him. “I like to ride for a long time, it’s an opportunity to think. When you pedal, you release endorphins, you have an indestructible, very positive mentality!” On his return to Brittany, after a final downpour and a fall in the mud on the Pont de Saint-Nazaire, the 68-year-old cyclist felt ” laundry “.
No matter, “It’s the culmination of my career as a cycle tourist”. After Paris-Brest-Paris and Brest-Menton, he completed his “third dream”. And to exclaim: “I have one more! Break the one-hour record for over a hundred years! No, I’m joking…” Certainly, but Christian Le Goff has already inquired about the average to exceed.
