Tour de France, day 6 "It was the sort of day where you really felt you earned your money": The peleton during stage six of the 2013 Tour de France. Thursday, Stage 6: Aix-en-Provence to Montpellier, 176.5km We are hearing it again for Friday - that cross winds are expected for the seventh stage of the Tour de France from Montpellier to Albi. Whether they come or not is anyone's guess really. We heard the same forecast for Thursday's sixth stage from Aix-en-Provence to Montpellier that - apart from the brilliant riding by Orica-GreenEDGE to get South African Daryl Impey up for the race leader's yellow jersey - was a storm in a team cup, racing-wise. In the yello: Daryl Impey. For the stage, we were expecting cross winds up to 60km/h to blow and threaten to split the peloton into several groups, but they never eventuated. I'm guessing all the riders in other teams got the same talk we did on Sky, as all the sports directors would have seen the same weather maps we did. But now, we are being told that the cross winds that we were bracing ourselves for will blow on Friday for the seventh stage from Montpellier to Albi. If they do, it will be interesting to see if Orica-GreenEDGE can defend the yellow leader's jersey for one more day - this time with Impey in it after he overtook teammate Simon Gerrans to go into first place overall by finishing five seconds ahead of him on Thursday's stage. Friday's stage is a tough one with a number of hills, and I wonder if the efforts Orica-GreenEDGE have made to hunt and defend the race lead will start to pay a price. Stuey O'Grady, their team captain, and his teammates have spent the last days pulling the peloton which hasn't been easy. Maybe we can set up Edvald Boasson Hagen (Sky) to take the yellow jersey from Impey. He is only three seconds down in second place overall. He is not a slouch on the hills. He can stay until there are 25 guys in the peloton, but he can bunch kick as well. But then again, Impey can do exactly the same. What is sure is that Orica-GreenEDGE have earned every bit of success they have enjoyed this last week - including Impey's claim to the yellow. It was class by Gerrans to sit up near the end and finish in the main group that included me at five seconds after the split occurred with about 500 metres to go. But Impey in no way was gifted the yellow jersey. Myself, Chris Froome and Cadel Evans (BMC) were the first guys in the group to finish at five seconds. We were full gas trying to hold on and we couldn't. Maybe we were out of position, or not willing to put our collar bones on the line. But Impey wasn't gifted. That was a hard stage and a hard finish. It was one of the most stressful I have had. It was spent fighting for position at the front. Then as you got where you wanted to be, a minute later you were 30 guys back again. It was like that the whole day. From the six to four kilometres to-go marks, we were at 60km/h, crossing tram lines, roundabouts and traffic islands and whatever. It was the sort of day where you really felt you earned your money. It was quite dangerous and a few guys did crash out - although, Mark Cavendish (Omega Pharma-QuickStep) did well to survive his spill with 32 kilometres to go. I didn't see Cav crash. We heard he did. I even asked his teammates when he was coming back, but their race radios weren't working, so they didn't know. I hear Frenchman Sylvain Chavanel tried to slow the peloton down for Cavendish; well, it was me who told him Cav had crashed. But it was a strange day from start to finish. One solo break went from the start - but after that there were no breaks at all. As I said, it is a weird Tour.