The AG2R La Mondiale service course is ordinarily a hive of activity, Cyclingnews is assured, as we pitch up to a sleepy building in an industrial estate in La Motte Servolex, on the cusp of the French Alps.
It's a small complex for a WorldTour team and normally people are brushing past each other in the narrow, semi-circular corridors, but today the Critérium du Dauphiné is in town, and most of the staff have made the five-kilometre journey to the finish line, where the team's talisman Romain Bardet is hoping to kick his season into life.
As a result, we're offered a range of delicacies from veteran rider Samuel Dumoulin's patisserie business, and given free rein of the service course, the hub of any cycling team.
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The entrance to the building bears the words 'France Cyclisme', which is the name of the holding company of the team, and, once past the small reception area, the corridor splits left and right, each curving round. The front half of the circle is office rooms and store cupboards. The back half is the warehouse.
The walls are lined with team photos from each year since the team's inception all the way back in 1992, when the team was known as Chazal and wore a garish pink and yellow kit. Vincent Lavenu, who founded the team, is still at the helm, and his office is at the end of the left-hand wing, though the offices here are nothing fancy - dull rooms livened up by the odd flash of memorabilia.
Sitting in the middle is the kit room, where a mind-bending quantity of jerseys, shorts, socks, warmers, casquettes, and all the rest are piled high on the shelves and in boxes.
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