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Watching the Tour de France

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  1. paddyirish
    Member

    Looking for a bit of advice here. I'll be in Brittany when the Tour goes through and am hoping I'll be able to get to see one of the stages, possibly the Team Time Trial.

    I'll be staying about 1.5 hrs drive away from the course, so will have to drive to get to the roadside. Does anyone have any advice on how best to do this- stage finish would be cool, but will I get within a country mile of it? How long would I have to be there before the caravan comes through. I'll probably have a 6yo with me, who would enjoy the caravan and all the plastic that that comes with it...

    If anyone who has been to see a stage (e.g. Yorkshire last year) has any advice, it would be much appreciated.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  2. PS
    Member

    Time schedules of the caravan and the race can be found on the LeTour website here. [That's for the TTT stage - click on "Time Schedule". There's similar info for every stage if you go up to "Route" and select the relevant stage.]

    From memory, they close the road that the race is on a good time (at least an hour, most likely two) before the caravan. However, you can drive up to it from sideroads at any time. [NB for mountain stages, they often shut the road at 10pm the night before.]

    TTT days isn't a bad idea as there'll be something happening for the duration, rather than the blink and you miss it of a normal stage; however, those normal stages are worth seeing - the race going through is used as an excuse by the locals to set up their garden furniture, crack open the booze and picnic and generally have a laugh. There's a lot of waiting involved, but there's a palpable buzz of expectation and excitement as the official vehicles get more frequent and then the helicopters appear.

    I'd suggest having a look at the route on a map and seeing if there's a feature to slow them down/string them out (hill, corner) or a view point where you can see right down the road.

    It'll be a lot busier near a finish line. Unless you're there very early doors, you won't get near the finish line at all (not least because a lot of the area around the finish - maybe even the last 200 metres - is cordoned off for pass-holders only), but then that's not necessarily a great spot to watch the race as you can't see up the road so will just see them whistle past. Better to go somewhere with a long vantage point.

    Advantage of the finish is you'll be in a town so there's stuff to see/do during the day while you wait, and you can have a nosy at the team buses, mechanics and the riders heading back to them after the finish.

    Yorkshire isn't really a normal example because they shut the roads very early, given they were expecting (and got) mahoosive crowds. They're substantially more relaxed about it in France.

    It's great fun. Good groups to stand near for entertainment value are:
    - Students (esp those in fake moustaches);
    - Norwegians (I'd say those in Norwegian jerseys and Viking hats and carrying Norway flags, but that describes them all);
    - Basques (but they tend to stick to the Pyrenees);
    - French families with young kids and pensioners (grandmere will become incredibly animated when the caravan goes past).

    Posted 8 years ago #

  3. paddyirish
    Member

    @PS

    What a wonderful post- Thank you!

    Posted 8 years ago #

  4. Edinburgh Cycle Training
    Member

    Apart from the mountains, TTT's are easilly the best stages to watch, TT's are great too. As PS states, no matter where you are on the course you see the whole race. Anything else is fun the first time, but can be an anti-climax.

    Stage finishes are mega busy so you do have to camp out for hours to keep your good spot.

    Stage starts can be good in wee places as you get to mingle easier with the riders and team staff - great if you like photos and autographs!

    Its worth a wee recce, even if just on google maps. find a wee uphill or corner spot where the riders have to slow (relatively speaking!)

    The caravan can be a big dissappoinment too. In rural bits they can whizz past, in busy places you can scramble and get nowt - adults will compete with kids! A small village can reap freebies big style - hats, tees, haribo, water, coffee, salami, inlflatable sticks, pens, key rings - we have a big collection!

    Being located not too far after a feed station can reward you with a bidon or musette.

    Enjoy the atmosphere, enjoy the day!

    Posted 8 years ago #

  5. Cyclingmollie
    Member

    I've only seen it in Paris. You do get to see the riders ten times. But the crowds on the south side of the Champs Elysees are four or five deep by the time the race arrives. The north side is much hotter. The caravan was hours ahead of time but it was easy enough to get a big green hand. It gets exciting when you see the helicopters. The tannoys bang on about French riders so much that I thought Jalabert must have attacked on the last day to take yellow. No, just French parochialism.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  6. fimm
    Member

    We saw the Grand Depart in Monaco - it was an individual Time Trial and was a good one to watch as we could wander about while also keeping an eye out for riders coming through. That was the day I realised just how big Mark Cavendish was - I couldn't quite understand the commentary (the tannoy wasn't great, though I think the French would have been too fast for me even if it hadn't been distorted) but I did get that he was going on and on about Mark Cavendish which I somehow didn't expect!

    The atmosphere is a big part of the experience - seeing the Olympic Time Trial was a good example of that, we had no idea what was going on but we had a great time!

    Posted 8 years ago #

  7. sallyhinch
    Member

    When we went to watch the Grand Depart in Dublin, we found a pub right by the course that was showing the TT on the telly and that was brilliant - you could watch what was going on on the screen and then just dash out with your pint at the operative moment to cheer the rider going by. For the London one, we found a spot near one of the big screens for a similar experience.

    It's fun too if you have bikes to nip onto the course afterwards and enjoy the closed roads. Not sure how relaxed the French are about this though

    Posted 8 years ago #

  8. paddyirish
    Member

    Thanks everyone.

    @sallyhinch, like the idea of trying out the bikes on the course.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  9. PS
    Member

    Not sure how relaxed the French are about this though

    In my experience, the French are intensely relaxed about most things. Once the race has gone past they do reopen the roads pretty quickly.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  10. Edinburgh Cycle Training
    Member

    I've never ridden the route post race - the pub always beckons!

    I have ridden stages and parts of stages prior to the caravan coming through though. With the barriers up and crowds there its utterly thrilling. Winding through Belfast's streets behind a Team Sky car (Ok, that was Giro) was brilliant but was eclipsed by the TdF Grand Depart in Yorkshire last year. The crowds on buttertubs still seem unreal. I've never experienced an adrenalin rush like it.

    Very mush looking forward to riding the GP route in Utrecht this year, and a wee bit of stage 2 from Gouda to the IS in Rotterdam.

    I cannot recommend riding a bit of the route pre caravan highly enough!

    Posted 8 years ago #

  11. paddyirish
    Member

    Well, made it to the TTT stage and as minipaddy didn't fancy 4hrs of driving, was able to go myself. As a result chose to go to the finish in Plumelec where I could absorb the atmosphere, without worrying about a small child getting squashed or lost, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

    Passed loads of cyclists on the way there and going home, and there was a fair few hundred thousand Euros of amateur bikes lying around. Positioned myself about 200m from the finish on the last bend, (where Sky had to wait for Nicholas Roche and probably lost it), I got a pretty good view of everything and had the big screen behind me if I missed anything. The noisiest reception was for the Bretagne-Seche Environnement team, though I wish the excitable French commenattor could have taken a leaf out of the Richie Benaud book.

    The comment above about the helicopters really rang true and it was especially dramatic as BMC and Sky came through at the end.

    Also great comedy as the team cars kept missing the exit (carefully positioned on the exit of a blind corner) to the increasing ire of the gendarmes, who looked as though they hadn't started shaving yet.

    There was a stall for campaigning for safer cycling (based on 1.5m clearance rule) where you had to complete a quiz (one for drivers, one for cyclists, one for kids and one for all road users) and you got a goody bag. A lot of people seemed to be doing it and, worryingly, quite a few were getting some of the questions wrong.

    A pleasant surprise was the lack of rip off on the stalls - Merguez and Chips and a cornetto set me back all of 4 euro.
    Also got clothing at the boutique at a very reasonable rate. The press van did a package similar to that you get at the book festival - goodies included tour posters, hats, wristbands, magazines and umbrellas, so the kids ended up happy. I was looking for some reading material to practice my French and this was perfect.

    Thouroughly recommend the Tour experience and was very pleased with the TTT choice, as I saw action over a 2hr period. Next time, I really fancy a Mountain stage (though not Alpe d'Huez, after reading my holiday book

    Thanks a lot to everyone for advice - a lot of it really rang true.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  12. PS
    Member

    Cool, glad you enjoyed it.

    Lack of rip off is a good point. I paid 20 euros for an official TdF Grand Départ t-shirt from one of the souvenir wagons in Utrecht. It's a really good quality T, decent value in my book.

    Posted 8 years ago #

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