Tag: Tour de France

A long day: Team UK (Laroque branch) support the Tour de France

The Tour de France 2012 hit Laroque on the Limoux – Foix stage on Sunday 15th July. It was a long day…. and that was just for the supporters.

The day before, passing through Quillan, we passed whole communities of camper vans holed up in prime spots for watching the race.
Unlike the Ariègeoise a fortnight before, there were plenty of signs to stop the poor old riders going wrong
And here at Laroque, we had our own rules and regulations to keep the event running smoothly.
Team UK (Laroque branch) prepare a poster to support the British competitors.
And here’s Brian, chalking all the Brit names across the route. He got a huge cheer from French spectators the whole way down the street. There are more of them than seems likely from this shot.
The pre-Tour caravane begins. They’re selling official merchandise. Everything that follows is free.
But while it was still pretty quiet, we had ‘a nice cup of English tea’ with neighbour Aisha
The LCL float, distributing baseball caps.
The Haribo float. Sarah caught a tiny bag of sweets flung in her general direction.
The Belin Box
Banette. They produce flour for local bakers.
You can have a flutter on the races at a PMU bar. Here’s their float.
Sarah gets a cocktail sausage
Free madeleines when the St. Michel float passed. Not Worth Getting Fat For.
No free tyres when the Kleber float passed
Almost over….. the Nesquick float.
The haul we found we had after everything had passed by, mainly destined as souvenirs for friends in England…. lucky people.
The first riders pass. Sue can identify almost all of them.
Bradley Wiggins passes our front door. No time to stop.
Team support.
Yet more riders…. known to Sue.
With the riders long past, all that’s left are support vehicles, official cars, medical support, press, gendarmes……..

Thanks Sue, thanks Tom for the use of all your photos.

The Tour de France: a dilemma

La Boulangerie Fonquernie at Laroque prepares for the arrival of the Tour de France

We have a few of the family here staying with us.  They claim that they want to see us.  They’ve mentioned walking in and near the mountains.  They certainly want good food and wine – lots of it – whether here at home or in one of the restaurants in the patch.

Really though, they’ve chosen this weekend with some care.  It’s the one when the Tour de France whizzes past our house.

Today then has been a day of careful research in advance of Sunday’s ‘fly past’.  There was a planning meeting at a nearby restaurant, ‘La Maison’, over copious and varied hors d’oeuvres, blanquette d’agneau and bavarois de framboises to decide what we should choose as our vantage point for the action.

We’ll have the planning meeting after we’ve got outside this little lot

Then there was the walk.  This followed the Voie Verte between us and la Bastide sur l’Hers, and closely hugs the route the cyclists will take; and the ridge path between la Bastide and home, which peers down over the same road.  Where to choose to watch?

We’d thought of the land occupied by the old station.  A film crew has moved in for the duration.  We considered looking up towards the race from the old railway line itself.  Too far away.

And the ridge, which we’d thought the perfect answer, turns out not to be.  Certainly we could see many hundreds of metres of road at once, but at a distance that means that we’d be doing no better than sitting at home in front of the TV.

We’ve decided against watching from here.

In the end, we’ll be staying put.  We want to see the riders close up, smell the sweat, and absorb the atmosphere.  There are still decisions to be made.  Upstairs in one of the bedrooms?  If so, which one?  Downstairs on the street, where we’ll be nearer still?

Shall we ham it up and decorate the house in Union flags, and hang banners reading ‘Go Wiggins’ out of the window?  So many decisions, so little time.

L’Ariégeoise & le Mountagnole: a very sticky moment

L’Ariégeoise comes to town

If you live in a small town like ours, you look for excitement where you can.  Today,  l‘Ariégeoise passed our house.  This is a cycle race organised just before the Tour de France every year in our department.  Unlike the Tour itself, you can choose which of three races to join.  The truly serious do l‘Ariégeoise itself: 160 km, with 3430 metres of climbing to do. The fairly serious do Le Mountagnole, 117.400 km, 2569m climb.  And the ones who are frankly playing at it do the Passejade, a mere 68.5 km, with a 745m. climb.

The two first groups were due to cycle through Laroque, and we locals were ready at 10 o’clock, lining the streets to cheer them on.  L’Ariégeoise marshals with Stop-Go batons in red and green strutted about importantly, directing the traffic, stopping and diverting cars as necessary.

The first cohort arrived, swished at speed past our house…and was gone.

Seconds later, some of them did a hasty U-turn and cycled back again, turned right across the bridge and picked up speed in a different direction.  What could be going on?

The parting of the ways

It turned out that l’Ariégeoises and the Mountagnoles, who until then had been sharing a route, parted company here.  The Mountagnoles had no special marshals, and when the time came, with heads down and intent only on completing their circuit in record time, they followed the l’Ariégeoise pack.  And some l’Ariégeoises followed the Mountagnoles pack.

Erm…..should we be here?

With nothing but their batons and booming voices to help them, l’Ariégeoise marshals tried to sort the sheep from the goats and send everyone on the correct path.  But it was hopeless.  More and more cyclists went wrong, and the area round the bridge became a clutter of wheeling tumbling bikes and their confused riders.  Some of them were amused.  Others not.  ‘Merde!’, ‘putain!’ and worse coloured the air as they saw their hard-won average speeds taking a turn for the worse.

A marshal tries to hold things together

I recorded some of the juicier moments and uploaded a short video to YouTube.  Why don’t you have a look?

Tour de France: a Post Script

We carelessly missed the local excitement of the Tour this year, by having to leave for England the very day it passed within 4 km. of our house.  But we didn’t miss it ALL.  Speeding northwards through the outskirts of Pamiers, a ville d’étape this year, we met these front-runners, all made from flowers, on a roundabout.   So if you’re having Tour withdrawal symptoms, now it’s been over for a fortnight or more, here’s a small souvenir.