Thursday 7 July 2016

Le Tour

Once a year here in France we have le Tour de France, I believe it is the world's biggest cycle race and is always well attended by people not only from France but they come from all corners of the globe as do the rider's, when we heard it was passing through several villages that were very close to us we seized the chance to go and get a glimpse of our favourites, (Chris Froome and Mark Cavendish)
There were signs up for weeks before telling us that the roads would close at 12.30 until 4 so we knew we would have to be in place for 12.00 we decided to go earlier as we knew places to park would soon be snapped up, there is always a caravan which comes ahead of the race throwing freebies out, this one was 20 kms long with loud music.

They threw some card boards and markers from the Vittel truck and so we wrote on them in readiness for the cyclists coming through

It says go Froome
Sadly we were so excited when the cyclists came we forgot to take a photo, first there were two riders (tete Dr la course) then a good 5 minutes behind was the main body (le peleton), we held our banners high and yelled "come on Froomie" we were lucky enough to be on the side that team Sky were on and they didn't go by too quickly so gave us chance to actually see the individuals.
We were there 5 hours in which time we had a picnic and a nice chat with a French family whose children we gave our sweet gifts from the caravan, some friends were watching in a nearby village and when it was all over we all came back to our house for a BBQ. A long tiring but enjoyable day...what did you do on Monday?
Oh yes, we recorded it on the telly and saw ourselves, fantastic..