Tour Stage 5 Preview: Le Cap d'Agde - Perpignan 196.5 km

Gavia’s preview doesn’t mention the fact that Cap d’Agde is more or less the world’s nudist capital.

On a more serious note, even if the finish is tricky I would not rule out Thor since Perpignan is his former hometown.

My comments here will be almost the same as stage 3: wind, wind, wind. It might be calm and so just a boring roll to Perpignan or it might be all out warfare in the wind.

With a bit of fatigue settling in, and either the motivation of having the maillot jaune or the scorn of just having lost, I think this day is for Tyler Farrar.

Euskatel-Eustadi cyclists are involved in crashes on this stage? I say at least one. But two would not surprise me.

Can it please be Friday already?!

I used to think he was all moustache, but actually I am rather enjoying this:

Patrice Chaplin as a Bohemian in Paris during the 50’s and 60’s, she spent time with Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. She was married to Charlie Chaplin’s son Michael and during her avant garde journeys through occult circles, her friends included Salvador Dali, Jean Cocteau (The last listed Grand Master or helmsman of the Priory of Sion, the secret society mentioned in Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code), Lauren Bacall, Miles Davis, author Umberto Eco and experts on the esoteric practices of the Cabbala in Spain. City of Secrets is the extraordinary true story of one woman’s journey to the heart of the Grail legend.

In Patrice Chaplin’s book City of Secrets, she traces her journey through the foothills of the Pyrenees, the land where the wanderings of the Grail and its Troubadours of the heart have left their indelible imprint.
In the 1950’s Patrice, then just a teenager, left England to study languages and taste the life of a true bohemian in France and Spain. She stumbled upon an ancient mystery in Girona, Spain, a town steeped in medieval grail secrets, Caballistic documents and a mysterious history. According to Chaplin, Girona was host to numerous famous European actors, mystics, priests, alchemists, and artists mentioned earlier and including the 19th century mysterious priest Berenger Sauniere. This priest and his little church dedicated to Mary Magdalene in Rennes le Chateau, France became famous in the many books written in the last century on the grail legends and the heretical Bloodline stories as posed in Holy Blood Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code.

Patrice was enchanted by the magnetism and power that exudes from the region surrounding the Pyrenees’ Mount Canigou. Over her many subsequent journeys to Girona, Patrice was told of numerous appearances there of a Lady of Light with a cup, thought to be Mary Magdalene. She was pulled into a strange series of experiences regarding ancient Cabbalistic grail traditions by her associations with her Spanish lover, a member of a local secret mystical sect.

Chaplin states in City of Secrets that the two Magdalene towers created a magnetic path that was connected to Egypt, thus energizing the land so that access to other dimensions was possible. She says that Torre Magdala in Girona was built in 1851, perhaps to coincide with the date of Bernadette Subiros’ vision of Our Lady at Lourdes just across the Pyrenees. This Magdalene tower also marked the site of an appearance of the Lady of the Cup in Girona. One of the major pilgrimage paths to Santiago de Compostela, Le Chemin de Saint Jacques passed through Girona, and countless pilgrims through the centuries would have stopped here. The Hebrew scholar Gershom Sholom believes that the esoteric Hebrew text, the Zohar, or Book of Splendor, was compiled by a Jewish scribe in Girona in the 12th century.

Sitting equidistant between these two Magdalene towers is the sacred Mount Canigou, dedicated to John the Baptist. This great mountain was an important ceremonial center for the ancient Celts, the Mithraic Sun cults, early Christians and medieval pilgrims. Canigou’s high iron content exudes a magnetic pull to time’s eternal spiritual seekers, similar to Sedona, Mt. Shasta, Devon, England, Rennes le Chateau, Teotihuacan and other places with iron-rich red earth. Many hidden mysteries permeate the region between these two mysterious towers of Magdalene.

Cav have gone all green. Which prompted a tweet from Georgie:

bring out the green Gimp!!!