Last July an even less successful event, the 2013 Etape du Tour which started in Annecy and was supposed to finish up on a nearby alp. For me it finished after only about 17km when I broke a spoke (or rather the spoke broke of its own accord) and spend a couple of hours waiting for the repair motorcycle to come along and fix it. Unfortunately as I later learned, repairs are only available some 20km into the race. So another abandon. Just after I had officially abandoned I got into conversation with one Sean O’Leary who organizes parties to the Etapes and “Trail Seekers” biking holidays in Ireland (www.trail-seekers.com). He explained how I could/should have re-positioned my wheel so that despite its lost spoke, it could have turned in a wobbly way and got me to the next repair station. As I was out of the race and my wife was already on the way this was information of a rather academic nature, but maybe it will come in handy sometime in the future. Once back down we hired a couple of tourist bikes and pootled along the bike path by the lake. Nor quite how I had planned to spend the day but very pleasant.