Monday 5 September 2016

It's Tour Time

We've been looking forward to today for months! As avid road cycling (armchair) fans we got excited when the route for this years Tour of Britain was first released. It looked suspiciously like it might be coming past our door. Then finally several weeks ago the detailed route was published and guess what? It DOES go past our door. So the planning began. Yellow marigolds were bought and planted into a load of plastic troughs we inherited from a neighbour (and don't use!) and placed on the porch roof. An old bike was sourced along with some yellow paint and my curtain fabric leftover stash was raided for some yellow lining fabric I knew I still had. 
While Mum was here we had a wet day and I had saved this job for just such a day - 30 metres of yellow bunting began to take shape.
Sunday afternoon saw a hive of activity. Lifting the bike onto the roof and putting bunting up, along with organising food and drink for a crowd. Monday turned out nice and as the first friends arrived at about 11:30am (all the way from Holland!) the party started.


Waiting in anticipation as 12:30 comes and goes - any minute now
After a few casual cyclists (who all got a very rowdy cheer), numerous marshals on motorbikes and a multitude of police motorbikes...................
The 'frenzy whipper upper' came past and announced over the loud speaker where the breakaway was and the fact that they were 3 minutes ahead of the peleton

Then The Commissar appeared 





And to huge cheers the breakaway came into view


The next part of the race seemed to be the team cars, who managed to navigate our corner upsides, when normal motorists seem to struggle to pass each other in opposing directions any other day of the week

A few minutes later, as expected the peleton appeared




Followed by an awful lot more team cars, police bikes, marshals, ambulances, fire teams, you name it! By the time they had all gone past we had made our way through the house, piled our plates, charged our glasses and spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the weather in the back garden.
Somehow I think it is unlikely The Tour will come through our little backwater another year so I'm glad we made the effort to acknowledge it this year. There always seems to be a carnival atmosphere watching them pass through - but a fine warm day made such a big difference - somehow I don't think we'd have had such a great time in the rain!

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