The Tour de France, that annual celebration of bicycles, Lycra and.erm.flat caps?

This year, Le Tour has confounded young geography students everywhere. Instead of starting in the sun-drenched countryside of the South of France, it kicked off in Yorkshire, which is usually found in the North of England. In the British Isles. Not France.

Thanks to a typically French laissez-faire attitude to world borders, the organisers of Le Tour gave scant consideration to geography teachers, who were forced to explain why, for three days this week, a tour of France also included the delights of Leeds, York, Harrogate, Sheffield, Cambridge and London - towns and cities not, it must be said, famed for their baguettes.

But we aren’t just worried about teachers on this side of La Manche. It is also likely that the route planners ignored the plight of France’s educators when they plotted each stage, clearly not considering the difficulty of pronouncing Buttertubs Pass or Aysgarth when you’re a Parisian classroom teacher.

So, for their Gallic shrug towards the plight of teachers around the world, it is off to the naughty step with the bosses of the Tour de Not-Quite-France.