Chapeaux off to the chaps who came up with such a sadistic first week of the Tour de France.

The route through Belgium and their infamous cobblestones has been an inspired choice.

The early stages have retraced the route of the famous Paris-Roubaix spring race - which is not known as the Hell of the North for nothing.

So instead of the usual procession of sprinters elbowing each other out the way to the line, we’ve had crashes galore, breakaways and a fractured peloton where all the big hitters are left scrabbling desperately not to lose ground.

“Carnage” is Lance Armstrong’s description of the bloody early skirmishes. But gripping, nonetheless, for those watching on TV.

There was a protest over the severity of the course when the riders “sat up” into Pau.

Rather than chasing down the breakaway leader, the rest just bunched up together and soft-pedalled the last couple of kilometres like a Sunday afternoon jaunt along the Leeds-Liverpool Canal towpath.

“Stop whingeing and just get on with it,” I grumbled from the comfort of an armchair.

And I’m glad to report that Phil Liggett, the doyen of cycling commentators, totally agreed.

“They complained 100 years ago when the Tour first went over the mountains,” he said.

“They thought the organisers were trying to kill them. But that’s the nature of the Tour de France.”

Exactement mes amis; no pain, no gain and all that.

The top boys will still emerge from the pack and defending champion Alberto Contador showed ominous form in what was clearly alien territory for the Spaniard. El Pistolero, as he is known in Madrid, is firing nicely.

But the unpredictability of the terrain has given the opportunists their shot at glory.

Those fool-hardy breakaway merchants, normally mown down by the majority within a few bends of the banner, see a genuine chance of staying out front all day.

It is not a good route for Mark Cavendish and the speed merchants chasing the green sprinter’s jersey. Too many risks, too many obstacles, too many unknowns for their teams to dominate the closing stages.

For us viewers, though, it has offered the unpredictability and margins for considerable error that you usually only see when the race hits the slopes of the Alps and Pyrenees.

The dramatic image of Armstrong powering through a dust cloud kicked up from the cobbles as he single-handedly chased down Contador’s group summed up what this devil of a race is all about.

Three weeks of torture, tribulation and tears before any triumph.

David Miller listed the notorious third stage - which saw 60 crashes ranging from bumps and bashes to major pile-ons - as among his top five worst experiences as a pro racer.

Would it sound evil to suggest it was one of my favourite legs to watch as a simple fan?

The powers-that-be work harder every year to mop up the drug cheats. They dream of the ultimately clean Tour.

As long as they are prepared to keep playing dirty with the route they plot towards Paris then we’ll all be happy with that.