Toulouse to Bagnères-de-Bigorre

Stage 12 - Thursday, 18 July - 202 km (126 mi)

< Stage 11 - Home - Stage 13 >

The Stage

Stage 12 will be the toughest stage so far, climbing the Col de Peyresourde and the Hourquette d’Ancizan before the descent into Bagnères-de-Bigorre. The best climbers should be together for the drop into Bagnères-de-Bigorre.

Winner: Simon Yates

Tour Touristique

A group of breeders, artisan pork butchers, supported by technical advisers, collectively took up the challenge of reviving the black pig of Bigorre, who was nearly extinct. In 1981 there were only thirty-four sows and two males left in the Hautes-Pyrénées. The last purebred pigs thus persisted, in their natural and historical cradle at the foot of the central Pyrenees where their trace has been attested since time immemorial. Too fat, too slow, unsuited to the conditions of intensive farming and the standards of industrial consumption, it did not correspond to the dominant economic model. Today, after more than thirty years of efforts and resistance to its planned disappearance, the black pork of Bigorre finds an emblematic place in its soil of origin.

View attached image.

View attached image.

View attached image.