Tour de France

One of the reasons we got a car was so we could follow the tour for a few stages. We also based our itinerary around being able to see some guy in a yellow jersey flash by.

Before we headed to the hills, we stayed a couple of days just outside of beautiful Biarritz on the southern edge of the west coast of France. This was a gorgeous city, and we got great weather while we were there.

 

From Biarritz we headed east into the Pyrenees mountain range. Our aim was to find a good campsite at the top of the hill for the next days stage. However, we hadn't studied the maps hard enough as our route was blocked by today's riders. As we had nowhere to go we stopped and watched the breakaway, peloton and stragglers ride past us in a cute little river town. We cheered them all along, including Cadel who was trailing Wiggins by about 30 seconds when he passed us (I think it blew out to a bigger difference by the end of the stage).

After waiting for the entire entourage to pass the cops opened up the road allowing us to continue on our way up the mountain to find a campsite. However, we didn't get far before we got stopped by another closed road, luckily after about an hours wait trying to communicate to friendly locals (and not getting very far) they reopened the road.

Once to the top, or near enough, we found a spot on the side of the road, to be our home for the next two nights. We had done some shopping so we set up a little picnic on side of the hill and watched the sunset over the Pyrenees with our French red wine and cheese.

 

 

The next day was what we had been looking forward to so after breakfast we headed up to the top of the hill to check out the finish line and to find our place to watch the some of the best riders climbing to the top. About an hour before the riders the caravan came through, basically this is about 30 floats from each of the sponsors that throw free stuff into the crowd. Anyway, in our one day of the Tour we scored hats, bags, free bottled water, a T-shirt, key rings, frisbees, cakes and nesquik.

 

As expected when the riders finally arrived, they each passed in the blink of an eye, despite having ridden over 140 km, a comparatively short day of riding, over some of the most grueling mountain passes in the Pyrenees. We had hoped that we would be able to see Cadel secure the yellow jersey, however it was Braddly Wiggins who had done enough by this stage to pretty much ensure his eventual victory.

Following our trip to the big hills we headed north to Paris in order to see the celebratory and final stage of the tour. After a relaxed morning consisting of baguettes, pastries and strolling the streets of Paris, we took up our spot on the Champs-Élysées. Traditionally when the riders reach this part of the course, the celebrations are put on hold and it all gets very competitive again for one last sprint to the finishing line. This year was no different with Mark Cavendish claiming his fourth consecutive stage victory in Paris. It was an amazing atmosphere, not too dissimilar to a very rowdy crowd at Flemington cheering home a champion racehorse.

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