Hello and welcome to live coverage of Stage 7 of the Tour de France - yet another 200km+ stage which should culminate in yet another bunch sprint finale.

Just 20 seconds now for the break, who continue to share the load even though their carrots are pretty much cooked.

It's Tony Martin time: Katusha-Alpecin push up in the wind and the German joins Marco Haller alongside Sky and Quick-Step. Poised to cause some strife?

The pack has left that wooded section and so the roads are a bit more exposed now. It remains to be seen if the winds cause the expected damage as feared - we can only hope. It would make for something a bit different, after all.

Now Sky and Movistar take up the pace-setting on the front of the pack in these straight roads sheltered by trees. They trail the four leaders by 27 seconds as Ag2R-La Mondiale and Astana all make their presence known, too. BMC and Trek as well: they're all there in formation.

The gap is 45 seconds for the four escapees, who can now see the peloton behind them as they ride along a long, flat and exposed road. The wind seems to have dropped a touch, so it's the calm before the storm.

Belgian national champion Oliver Naesen comes to the front ahead of a couple of AG2R-La Mondiale riders in support of their man Romain Bardet, who has had a quiet Tour so far - and I mean that in a good way. Apart from that crash in the wet roundabout back in Belgium (or was it Germany?) - which did for his rivals Chris Froome and Richie Porte too - Bardet has gone under the radar. He'll be chomping at the bit ahead of the Jura mountains over the weekend...

Team Sky and Movistar have now come to the front because of the threat of those crosswinds. The gap is down to one minute for the break as the tension continues to rise...

Fabio Aru's Astana team-mates have edged forward as well - it's clear that there are many nervous riders out there. It has been so windy today that French Eurosport's Jacky Durand claims there is no way that 120 riders will arrive together at the finish - he's expecting the peloton to fragment quite considerably before the sprint...

And here come the Katusha-Alpecin cavalry, also lending a hand ahead of their man Alexander Kristoff's attempt to open up his account today. The gap has come down to 1:55 now for the four men.

The pace has gone up considerably now as Quick-Step commit another man to the chase - Jack Bauer joining Julien Vermote and contributing to the pulls of Lotto Soudal.

With the winds quite blustery around Nuit-Saint-Georges, teams will be on alert to ensure they're in the right position to either profit from this - or not miss out.

Tell you what, the terrain today is lumpier than the profile suggests. The peloton is currently tackling a tree-lined climb with Cofidis, Quick-Step, Lotto Soudal and Trek all on the front. The four leaders have 2:35 on the pack - they're through the woodland and riding through a little village.

The Trek-Segafredo team of Alberto Contador and the BMC team of Richie Porte are near the front now in this tailwind, trying to keep their GC riders out of trouble. Trek may even target a high finish for John Degenkolb, who has only once cracked the top ten so far in this year's Tour - and that was yesterday.

Cofidis finally send a man onto the front to lend a hand - in the not inconsiderable form of Christophe Laporte. The French team are buying the right to fight in the final sprint - one of the unwritten rules of cycling - and it's going to be another fiesty one, especially with the beef simmering away between their man Nacer Bouhanni and his former FDJ colleagues.

As in the intermediate sprint, it's Mori and Bouet who do battle from the break over the summit of the climb - and the Frenchman just does enough to hold on to the take the solitary point on offer. That was quite well contested considering neither rider is of any import in the KOM polka dot jersey classification.

We're onto the gentle Cat.4 Cote d'Urcy (2.5km at 4.2%). It's nothing more than a quite scenic bump - there's no way it is going to be of any strategic importance in the grand scheme of things.

The riders have completed that sweeping downhill and are approaching the climb, with the break now just over two minutes ahead.

Roglic wasn't the only one to go down in that crash: Romain Sicard (Direct Energie) and Dani Navarro (Cofidis) also hit the deck. They all got back on their bikes, mind.

That man Primoz Roglic, who crashed in the feed zone when his musette got caught in his chain, has gone down again, we're hearing. Perhaps there was still an issue with the Slovenian's bike. Either way, he's having a troubled debut Tour. Roglic was meant to shine in the opening ITT in Dusseldorf, but he was one of three LottoNL-Jumbo riders to crash in the wet. And that's now a second crash in the space of an hour...

The terrain has got a bit lumpier as the riders climb up before a descent to the foot of the only categorised climb of the day. The gap is still over three minutes for these four escapees - Bouet, Mori, Gene and van Baarle, who have been out sinde the first kilometre.

Thanks to the expected post-prandial slump from the peloton, the break's advantage has crept back to 3:30. And look, it's getting windy...