Alps or Pyrenees? The two mountain ranges are often juxtaposed by the Tour de France. Do you prefer one over the other?If you do, chances are its the Pyrenees. Many cite the wilder feel, the older buildings, the roads that feel more irregular to climb, while the Alps have big ski resorts, crowded valleys and busy roads. Its true in the sense yes the Alps have have big ski resorts, crowded valleys and busy roads but so do the Pyrenees, see Andorra for example. Just like the Pyrenees, the Alps have plenty of wilder corners with roads that werent built by bulldozers to pave access to a ski resort in the 1970s too.Only the Tour is often a poor prism to refract this back to TV audiences and this televisual psychogeography can distort the views.This weekends stage to Alpe dHuez is interesting as the main climb has As-Seen-On-TV celebrity but the Col de Sarenne gets some limelight, in part to persuade visiting cyclists to stay and try more roads in the area. If the Sarenne is rewarding for the scenery and solitude it still begins on the busy Col du Lautaret main road by the industrial Chambon dam.There are plenty of quiet valleys in the Alps that offer tourists plenty of rural charm, cyclists get empty, irregular climbs and residents struggle to access public services just like the Pyrenean clichs too. But these parts dont host the race often, if at all and as a result dont seem to exist among the mythology of cycling locations.Todays stage passes many of these quieter corners. It rides into the Vercors, a spectacular part of the Alps, or pre-Alps if youre a stickler for geology but only via a main road up and then back down rather than any of the spectacular cliff-hugging roads but it could still look good on TV. The Vercors has featured in the Tour but rarely. It is a quiet place, no mass tourism ski resorts and plenty of roads that started out as smuggling trails or forestry paths and then gradually got tarmacked. Once the race quits the Vercors itll take the training roads of Paul Magnier.Nearby is another corner of the Alps called the Trives which offers wide open spaces in the mountains and little in the way of mass tourism nor industry although it does now have a relatively new autoroute. Motorists have to pay but they get their moneys worth with the views along the way.Later in the stage is the Champsaur, another corner of the Alps often passed by in the Tour. But illustrative as the race finishes in Orcires-Merlette, the name of the ski resort. Merlette with its apartment tower blocks is the aberration, but because the Tour visits its easy to remember this rather than all the side roads and smaller passes not seen on TV.Indeed rather than juxtapose, if the Tour doesnt show off all the Alps, it doesnt do the Pyrenees justice either. It sticks to familiar haunts like the Tourmalet, Aspin and Soulor passes. If Gavarnie was a novelty this year its just at the foot of the Tourmalet. So a similar selection bias is evident as the wilder parts of the Pyrenees dont and even cant host the race very often. This years stage to Les Angles touched on a relatively unexplored part of the eastern Pyrenees for the Tour but the race did not stay to explore more. Similarly western parts in the Basque Country are even more unknown to the Tour despite having some of the hardest climbs in France, something that ought to be a draw for the organisers. But these areas are relatively remote.Logistics play a big part. Alpe dHuez can host 23 teams with their 28 bed allocation and supply parking to the fleet of vehicles every team brings. So can the city of Pau but it means the Tour struggles to reach smaller places.One nerdy point on how Tour stages are hosted these days is that increasingly its a regional effort. Rather than one host town taking on all the costs, departments and regions are sharing the burden. This means a small and relatively poor town could get to host the race if theres something to gain for the wider region. So the Col de Mhatch, aka Artazamundi could feature one day if the Pyrenees-Atlantique council wanted to promote what many forums say is hardest tarmacked road pass in France.And yes theres more beyond France for the Alps and Pyrenees but thats beyond a postcard from the Tour de France. But it does speak to the relative size of these mountain ranges, the Alps by virtue of being bigger in France offer a lot that goes unseen.Todays intermediate sprint in Corps comes a relatively flat part of the stage. But turn left and theres the Col de lHomme and beyond to the Notre Dame de la Salette sanctuary, perhaps too sacred for the profanity of sports event and never seen on TV at the Tour but rewarding for travellers.The post Postcard from the Champsaur first appeared on The Inner Ring.