“Françoise, you are part of the legend of Paris-Roubaix”. So reads one of the messages on the wall of Chez Françoise, a humble café in Troisvilles that sits at the gateway to the Hell of the North, just around the corner from the opening cobbled sector of this storied Classic.
It was written by ‘Les Flecheurs du Tour de France’ – the ‘arrowmen’, who go around fixing the directional signs all along the course for both Paris-Roubaix and the Tour. They’re always sure to pop in for a coffee, a beer, or even something stronger as they go about their work in the build-up to Roubaix. In fact, the rest of the sign reads: “The flecheur who does not stop to say hello to Françoise ahead of Paris-Roubaix is not a true flecheur’.
They’re not the only ones for whom the place has become a rite of passage. Raymond Poulidor, Bernard Hinault, Joop Zoetemelk, Gilbert Duclos-Lasalle, Jean Stablinski, Magnus Backstedt, Johan Vansummeren, Thor Hushovd… the walls are adorned with photos of famous faces who’ve stepped inside.
Magnus Backstedt bused a bunch of his mates over to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his Roubaix win in 2014. Even now, it’s a well-trodden stop for pros on recon – either to get warm or simply snap a selfie from the roadside.
Every Tuesday before Paris-Roubaix, the race directors from the Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) hold the ‘official’ Paris-Roubaix reconnaissance. It always starts with breakfast at Chez Françoise, and the meal is always an omelette, maintaining a tradition that now stretches back more than 30 years.
“Omelette was what I served the old directors of the race when they turned up one day in 1992,” the eponymous Françoise says as she welcomes us in on the Friday before the 2026 Paris-Roubaix.
“They were out looking for new cobblestone sectors, they were hungry, and they called in to ask if I had any sandwiches. I didn’t have any bread, but I have always kept chickens, so I had plenty of eggs. My husband had made some rabbit terrine, so I served that and some cornichons up alongside the omelettes.
“Before leaving, they introduced themselves as the organisers of Paris-Roubaix, tapped me on the shoulder and said ‘we’ll be back’.”
And so a legend was born. The race officials, true to their word, have been back for their omelettes every year since, and over the course of more than three decades, Chez Françoise has woven itself into the fabric of Paris-Roubaix.
Humble ground
You’ve no doubt seen it flash by on television, or captured in still by race photographers. The weathered red-brick façade, the old Jupiler sign (even though Coq Hardi is now the house beer), the signs pointing to Roubaix one way and Paris the other… it screams Paris-Roubaix, literally and figuratively.
The woman inside the building is Françoise Santerre, who recently celebrated her 70th birthday. She opened the café, which is essentially the front room of her house, alongside her husband, Raymond, in 1980.
“People feel at home here,” she says. “It’s only a very small café in a very small village, but it’s a big family. And for a long time now we have been part of the Paris-Roubaix family – I’m very proud of that.”
Troisvilles literally translates to ‘three cities’, but there’s far less to it than that. Even ‘village’ is an overstatement – only 800 people live there. It’s a sleepy neighbourhood in a corner of France that has been left behind in the post-industrial age. Disused slag heaps loom large over the otherwise flat landscape, and ancient cobbled farm tracks still cut through it. Come Sunday, these pavé sectors will be alive with whirring freehubs and rattling carbon fibre frames – cutting-edge technology on humble ground.
Chez Françoise itself is as modest as cafés come. The bar is small, with seating space for around 20 people, on unfussy tables and chairs. Your coffee will be poured from a filter pot, and if you want milk, then there certainly won’t be anything artistic about it. Cold drinks come from a fridge you’d find in any normal home, and the omelettes are cooked up in a kitchen you’d find in any normal home.
Because this is a normal home, in which Françoise has lived for over 30 years.
On the Friday we visit, beers and spirits are being sipped in advance of the midday watershed, and Françoise is shooting the breeze with the punters and taking deliveries from various suppliers. Multiple crates of champagne turn up, and one bottle is immediately opened. Before we had finished chatting with her, a gazebo had sprung up in the yard.
It’s all gearing up for the big day on Sunday.
“We are expecting a lot of people once again. It’s always a big party,” Françoise says.
“We put up gazebos, out front and out the back, and everyone gathers outside. I have a singer, an accordionist – everyone has a dance – we do a barbecue, frites, omelettes, of course. It’s a fantastic atmosphere.
“I hope I get a chance to go out and see the race this time. Last year, I was so busy I didn’t even see the riders go past.”
She might not always see them, but as she talks us through the faces in the photos on the wall, she knows the sound a mile off. “There’s another team going by for their recon,” she says, without turning away from the wall, as Soudal-QuickStep whizzes past.
Françoise has cycling in the blood, and her involvement goes beyond the café’s link with Paris-Roubaix. She also used to run a cycling school for youngsters alongside the grandfather of the former French pro Quentin Jauregui, who cut his teeth there, as did Florian Sénéchal. Françoise dreams that Sénéchal might one day win Paris-Roubaix.
She is also the president of the Reagir organisation, which she set up in 2007 as a way to protect and preserve the cobbled tracks in the local area. It’s very much in the spirit of the Amis de Paris-Roubaix (Friends of Paris-Roubaix), and she will help them out from time to time if they need help further afield. “That’s me there,” she says, pointing to a photo of a team of workers with shovels and picks. “We laid 1,250 cobblestones that day. It’s hard work, but it’s important work – like the omelettes.”
On top of that, she works as an assistant to the Mayor of Troisvilles, and her dining table, separate from the bar area but where the ASO breakfast is held, is awash with invitations she’s preparing for an alumnus dinner in May. She is also somehow involved in the pigeon racing circuit, regularly offering accommodation to the practitioners of the sport, mainly from Belgium, who sip Ricard in the bar as they wait for their birds to return from locations as far-flung as Barcelona.
“I’m always running around doing something. That’s my life. I have my potatoes to plant out next week, too,” Françoise says.
In the café you tell of your struggles and your joys
Keeping busy keeps Françoise from slowing down. That would have been an easy thing to happen since her husband died seven years ago. “He had pancreatic cancer. I cared for him for two and a half years. We would have celebrated 50 years of marriage this year.”
The emotions are raw, but at Chez Françoise, that’s just the way it goes.
“In a café like this, a simple village café, you tell of your struggles, and you tell of your joys,” she explains.
“For me, my clients are like my family. My regulars, I see them every day, and I get to know everyone who visits from further afield. The couple outside are from Brittany. Yesterday I had a group of Italians who came to eat here and brought me some cake. I still get Christmas cards from an Englishman who worked in Troisvilles for six months.
“I’m still of the old era,” she adds. “Thierry Gouvenou, the Paris-Roubaix director, always comments on how cycling has changed – it’s all about money now. Life has changed, too. But the café will always be about conviviality. You give someone a glass, and they tell you what’s going on in their life. People come here for comfort. That’s my job.”
Humility, humanity, community – fundamental values of cycling, a sport built upon the modest mode of transport of the common man. It’s little wonder that Paris-Roubaix would align itself with Chez Françoise in this way. It’s a race that for 120 years has eschewed glamour and laid bare the harshness and hardship of this corner of France.
If you invented Paris-Roubaix now, it would be a made-for-television spectacle of thrills, spills, and clippable TikTok reels. But what the would-be modernisers of the sport are not always so quick to appreciate is that the beauty of cycling lies in the fact that, over time, it weaves itself into places like Chez Françoise; into life itself.
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