DANIEL MARTIN TOUR DIARY:My experience so far is that everybody rides closer together. You are nearly touching off each other all the time

AFTER THE up and down of Tuesday’s stage, the race to Rouen was quite different. It was flatter, but once again you really had to be careful to avoid crashes. The team has now charged me with looking after Ryder Hesjedal in the finals – myself and Christian (Vande Velde) have to do that. We have to stay near the front to avoid any splits in the bunch, but it makes it a bit sketchy as you have to get involved in the sprints not to lose time.

There was a huge crash inside the final three kilometres which brought down riders like world champion Mark Cavendish, but we managed to avoid it. So that was good.

There were two big crashes today. The first one came inside 50 kilometres to go, when we were racing along by the coast. The wind was blowing from the side and as ever with crosswinds, it was really dangerous. But we’ve been lucky thus far; the stages before now have been designed by the organisers with crosswinds in mind. With the prevailing winds there, we were supposed to have them all day, every day. Instead, we had very little wind and nice weather . . . we were really lucky. That makes things safer.

A break went early on and once it was gone, those of us in the bunch were able to look around. The stage was really beautiful – we saw white cliffs along the coast, these coming in-between these little fishing villages with thousands and thousands of people there. They were three or four deep by the side of the road, and we barely went 100 metres without seeing someone.

That’s the case even when the roads are in the middle of nowhere. It’s incredible, and it makes it even more exciting heading towards the mountains. I can’t wait to see the crowds there and experience the atmosphere.

My legs are feeling better and better each day, so that excites me. I’m keen to see how I will do.

My team-mate Tom Danielson had a bad crash on Tuesday, suffering a separated shoulder as a result. He was uncertain if he’d be able to continue but he and the team doctors decided he’d start. He ended up being pretty good. He lost time again, but he is staying out of trouble at the back of the bunch. If you position yourself there, you can lose time due to how the wind blows. He’s not worried about time now, though, but rather on staying safe and getting over his crash.

The race has been pretty straightforward in terms of saving energy. The first three, four hours have been very easy, and that was the case again on the stage. But that’s the difference in this race. You are not accumulating the deep fatigue you get from long, hard races that are tough all day, but the Tour is harder in the finish than any other race. We rode so fast in the final, doing 65 kilometres in about one hour 10 minutes. With a tailwind pushing us, it was super fast.

My experience thus far of the Tour is that everybody rides closer together. You are nearly touching off each other all the time in the peloton – it’s that tight. That obviously makes it that much more dangerous. All it takes is one person to make a mistake and there are 20 guys on the floor. You’ve got to be really attentive.

As I write this, we are staying in the most beautiful hotel. It is a five-star hotel in the centre of Rouen, right by the cathedral. There are four-metre high ceilings, lovely rooms – it’s really plush. It’s also a bit of a labyrinth – the soigneur’s room is 100 metres away, and is up two flight of stairs, down one, left, right, around a corner . . . it is a maze.

It’s a big contrast to the hotel we had two night ago. The rooms were impossibly tiny – there are two of us sharing a room and we couldn’t get the beds more than five centimetres apart. When a room is not even big enough to open a bag, you realise you are back in France! A lot of the hotels are like that.

Luckily I share with Tom (Danielson) and we get on pretty well. Also, he doesn’t snore, so that’s important. It was grim, though. The view out the window appeared to be of a prison. If you looked one way, you saw a prison; if you looked the other, it was a highway. Tour organisers decide where the teams go but while the quality can be bad at times, they try to average them out over the course of the Tour. They have a star rating for the hotels and they say that it’ll all work out evenly between the teams in the end.

The latest hotel is amazing and so I guess that proves the point. You know you are going to get a good night’s sleep. At the end of the day, though, a bed is a bed.

The conditions are tough at times but that’s just another thing that makes the race so testing . . . I guess it’s called character building.