The Tour de France will celebrate 100 years of racing in the Pyrenees by featuring several of the mountains' mythical climbs in the climax to the 2010 race.

Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador will have to contend with treacherous cobblestones and blustery North Sea winds during next summer's race and will face the daunting Col du Tourmalet, which will be ridden in both directions.

Christian Prudhomme, the Tour director, said the objective of the schedule was to create an unpredictable race with excitement all the way to the final stage in Paris. The race will spend four days in the Bearn region that separates France from Spain and will begin in Rotterdam with a nine kilometre prologue time trial on Saturday, July 3.

"It is going to be a big fight," Prudhomme said. "We wanted to make sure anything could happen anywhere."

The race will then move onto Belgium, where the first stage will take the riders along the North Sea, with 12km and 6km sections on an embankment, where cross winds are likely to split the peloton.

"We will follow in the wake of Eddy Merckx on this arduous succession of mountain climbs," Prudhomme said. "With the celebration of the first crossing of the Pyrenees, it's logical that the Pyrenees will be harder than the Alps on this Tour."

The opening stage to Brussels will also go through Antwerp and Meise, the hometown of five-times winner Merckx. A tribute will be paid to the classics, with the second stage going through roads used on Liege-Bastogne-Liege.

Leaders will have to be extremely cautious in the third stage, which features treacherous cobbled sections used for Paris-Roubaix, the Queen of the Classics. "We don't put cobblestones for riders to fall, but to make a selection," Prudhomme said. "There will be 11km of cobblestones in the last 30km. There will be some damage."

Although the Alpine stages will not prove too arduous, a one-stage detour in the Jura mountains is expected to prove tricky, with 56km of climbs over the last 120km on the seventh stage to Station des Rousses.

"That could cause havoc," said Prudhomme. Those that survive the Pyrenees will then head to Bordeaux for the last rest day before a final individual, 51km time trial to Pauillac through the Bordeaux vineyards.

The race will end on the Champs Elysees in Paris on July 25.

The route for the 2010 Tour de France: