The Bearable Lightness of Being Home

Back to the quirky roads of Britain

Today, I reconnected with the Tour of Britain Women. It has been a decade since I was last able to attend this wonderful race in person. Much has changed. Much has not.

The first visible sign of the race which I sighted today was this little printed sign, hanging in the dank morning air seemingly in the middle of nowhere, pointing the way to the stage start deep in the Dalby Forest. Its three cryptic letters, and their upside-down mirror image goes to the heart of why road racing in this country will forever be a hidden world. It is code for This Does Not Belong.

Pointe de Passage Obligatoire - Odd

PPO is a cycling term, understood only by cycling people, and to absolutely no one else. It is universal to any bike race, pretty much anywhere in Europe, and perhaps the world. The Giro has a PPO. The Ronde van Vlaanderen has a PPO. There is a PPO at the Tour of Britain Women.

The abbreviation harks back to the French origins of the sport, over a century ago. It stands for “Pointe de Passage Obilgatoire”, or “Mandatory Passing Point”, and it is an instruction to all accredited vehicles trying to access either a start or a finish line to follow a certain route in, or run the risk if butting up against barriered roads. Like the human appendix, it has dodged evolution and the spread of anglophone terminology and survived in its original, mystifying form. What I particularly like about this sign is that they have elected to print a number of arrows which can be hung to point either left, or right. Therefore there is an upside down PPO on the sign which reads squarely as Odd.

Enough about PPOs.