2012 Tour de France: André Griepel wins but Mark Cavendish brought down in crash

André Griepel, the German sprinter and former team mate of Mark Cavendish, comfortably won the sprint in Rouen after a big crash within the last three kilometres brought down many of the peloton including Mark Cavendish. According to reports on twitter Bernard Eisel has said he was the one who fell first.   

Veteran Italian sprinter Alessandro Petacchi was second, Tom Veelers third, Matthew Goss fourth and Peter Sagan fifth, so picking up more useful points in his quest to win the Green Jersey.

This is Griepel's second Tour de France stage win. 

There is no change overall as the crash happened within the last three kilometres but it would have been good to have been able to see Cav against Griepel at this fast finish in Rouen. We may well see that tomorrow at Saint-Quentin another potential sprint finish.

Although not officially confirmed it looks from Twitter reports that both Mark Cavendish and Bernard Eisel are OK, which is obviously good news.

Update 18h BST: Confirmed that both Cavendish and Eisel will ride tomorrow.

2012 Tour de France goes to the seaside

Today the 2012 Tour will take a 100K jaunt along the seaside from Le Tréport to Fécamp passing through Dieppe, although there won't be much time to relax with bucket and spade as the route will be relatively lumpy with a succession of chalk hills to climb and descend. At Frécamp the riders head inland for Rouen for a very likely bunch sprint.

There is a total of 214K today from Abbeville to Rouen with four 4th Category climbs – the last one comes at 143K – just after the intermediate sprint in Fécamp. The forecast looks benign with sunshine and cloud, temperatures in the early 20s and a light wind blowing off the land. The riders had better make the most of this as tomorrow's forecast is for heavy, local thundery showers with gusts up to 65 k/h.  

There will be the usual contenders for the sprint with the probable exception of Marcel Kittel who has been suffering at the rear of the race over the last couple of days. Mark Cavendish is likely to have to go freelance again today, especially as Sky lost one of their riders – Sivtsov – yesterday. Cav, however, has shown on a number of occasions that he can win without a train to help him so he might today move up to 22 stages wins equal with sprinter André Darrigade. Doubtless André Griepel will be determined not to let this happen! Tyler Farrar will hope he can repeat his Independence Day win of last year on this 4th July.

It remains to be seen whether the redoubtable Michael Morkov, leader of the Mountains Jersey, will manage to get into a breakaway today for the fourth successive day to claim a few more climbing points. If he does it will be a surprise as he looked pretty well cooked towards the end of yesterday's stage.  

I doubt if there will be any change overall. I would expect Cancellara to keep Yellow until the race gets to the Vosges on Saturday as the stages on Thursday and Friday are relatively flat. 

15.45: Update: forecasters have got it wrong, rain forecast for later today has arrived with the peloton going through showers. Sunshine and showers – hope it is dry for the finish.     

Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme: overnight stay

 Incoming tide@Saint-Valéry 

Rather than driving back to London from Touraine in one day we chose this time to stop overnight in Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme. Although we have stayed on a number of occasions at Saint-Valéry, on the south west side of the bay of the Somme, it is a number of years since we were there. Interesting and good to return. 

Firstly it looks as though the silting up of the bay has gathered pace since our last visit. Much of the eastern part of the bay appears now to be permanent pasture. Of course, the days when clients of the Hotel du Port et des Bains crossed the harbour by boat to swim on the others side of the levée have long since disappeared. 

The town looks smart and more prosperous with a number of houses etc. refurbished plus plants and new pavements in the port area. There were, however, relatively few restaurants open last night. We ate quite well in the Le Nichols, which was full. Le Nichols, however, treats wine with contempt as so many restaurants in northern France do, offering few details apart for the name of the appellation – no vintage dates and rarely the name of the producer. We chose a bottle of Couly-Dutheil's Chinon Les Gravières d'Amador Abbaye de Turpenay. Before ordering I asked the vintage and was told it was 2009. However, seconds later when it arrived it had become 2010. I didn't notice in time and, in any case the 2010 was probably the better match for our food, but the lack of accuracy sums up the attitude to wine.      

Hotel du Port et des Bains 

 Seaward exit from the port 

Seaward exit from the port 

Unless you are a motor racing fan this is a time to avoid the popular A28 route to the Loire valley and on to Bordeaux as it is the 24 hour Le Mans weekend. As we drove north from le Mans on Thursday afternoon we could see a steady stream of cars (many sports cars and specialist cars) heading southwards for the race. It will not have helped that there was disruption on Friday morning at the tunnel due to illegal immigrants attempting to cross to the UK through the tunnel. 

Whereas getting to Le Mans is spread out over several days, the return is concentrated on late Sunday and Monday. Rouen is likely to be very busy as well as Le Tunnel sous La Manche.