We made a last minute spur of the moment to go down to Kent today to see stage one of the Tour de France, and I’m very glad we did. Rather than attempting to see (or not see) the finish in Canterbury we made our way to an obscure stretch of road somewhere in the middle of nowhere, unfolded our Greenbelt folding chairs and sat by the road in the sunshine eating lunch and generally having a marvellous time.

About two hours before the race the ‘caravane’ comes through – lots of weird and wonderful advertising vehicles dispensing free gifts. I rather liked these yellow wheely bins:

We collected quite a few goodies – I’ll try to gather them all together tomorrow and take a photograph.

The excitement builds in intensity as the race approaches. Then, all of a sudden… swoosh… as the ‘peleton’ zooms by at great velocity (note the clapping hands – included in the photo to give a sense of the atmosphere):

Nearly all of them sped by at once, except one who was a minute or two behind, and this guy, who tootled past 5 minutes later having obviously not had the best of days:

All in all a great spectacle. If you’re in the UK then you can watch the Tour every day (I think) at 7 on ITV4.

Other bloggers who saw the Tour:
Diamond Geezer was at the Prologue
Onionbag blogger took some great photos
Steve Collins took some good Prologue photos
John Davies watched Stage 1
Jonny Baker took Prologue pictures

I’ll add more as I find them.

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