2023-women

Stage 1: Volcanic cathedral

At the Grand Départ in Clermont Ferrand we find a volcanic cathedral built with materials from the nearby Chaine des Puys.

Another of volcanoes in the Massif Central but the sparks have long gone. Hopefully the race will add some sparks!

Eclogite is one of the hardest rocks there is. Yvonne Brière used these hard rocks to prove her thesis to become a female pioneer in geology.

Fossils can be found in all of France. We find a lot along the Lot river in today’s stage due to the special geological circumstances here.

Our race course today will rock it. Literally. The geological history of the Tarn and Aveyron at your footsteps, or wheels.

Conodonts are eel-like animals but they are extinct. The last fact helps us learn about geological time scales in great precision.

Mountain are like people. They get stressed and sometimes even a complete meltdown. The Pyrenees show what happened then.

The future of the past is a bit cryptic. It’s where geology comes in to predict the future climates looking at the past.