Let’s just put it out there – I have no interest in sport, any sport, ever.
Summer sport seems never ending, disrupting normal tv programmes, and just as I breathe a sigh of relief at the end of an interminable football season, my screen and radio stations are cluttered with Cricket, French Open, Cricket, Womens World cup football, Cricket, Wimbledon, Cricket, snooker, Cricket. Aarggh!
So you can see why I’ve never given the Tour de France, (hereafter known as TdF), a moments consideration. I was in Harrogate some years ago for a conference a week before the start of the TdF which happened to be in Yorkshire that year. Harrogate was in the grip of TdF fever and we couldn’t get sense out of even the most stoic Yorkshire person, although most of their excitement was regarding the transient wealth it would bring to the town. I was relieved to fly home.
Other than that it was always something that happens somewhere else, just a load of men riding bikes up and down hills and mountains in the heat of a French summer – bonkers in my book.
Until this year when the TdF came to western France and one of the stages, from Libourne, near Bordeaux, to Limoges in Haute Vienne, (a mere 252 kms), came within seven kilometres of our village on my husband, Mike’s birthday. Double Whammy, I didn’t even attempt to swerve it. Friends were consulted, various vantage points mentioned, but no one knew what impact the race would have on the villages through which it passed. What would be the volume of traffic, could we park, how big would the crowds be? Did I really have to go?
The most obvious place would be St Aulaye, just over in the Dordogne, but because it was obvious, would the world and his neighbour be there? Would there be toilets? (Always my greatest worry!) There’s a large campsite with a public parking area, but would it be full before we got there? We fretted for days, chewing over ‘what ifs’. Friends living nearer to St Aulaye invited us for a BBQ after the circus had passed through, which would involve meeting them there, and other friends told us to avoid St Aulaye, it would be mobbed. They were going to a tiny village further on. I privately agreed with them and we made a back up plan that if we couldn’t park, we would drive back to a village, Bonnes, about four kms from St Aulaye and walk there, or we could drive to St Privat, a much smaller village and take our chances there.
The ‘peloton’ (apparently not an extortionately priced piece of lockdown exercise equipment, but a collective noun for the race participants) was due at about 1:30, and the ‘Caravan’ which precedes it sometime after 11am, so we left home at 10am on quiet roads. The car park in Bonnes was reassuringly empty, so we knew we could come back if we needed to. We continued to the campsite and although we picked up a couple of cars en route, when we got to the first ‘route barrèe’, the cars in front went straight past, so we did too. They even drove past the campsite to a car park nearer town, but we, much relieved to see it half empty, drove in and parked under the trees. Phew! One hurdle out of the way. We joined dozens of decanting car owners, some with chairs, damn! Why didn’t we think of that?
In the town square’s two bar/restaurants the reserved tables were already full of (mainly) English middle classes quaffing rosè, talking loudly, not at all embarrassing. Dutch families were quietly drinking coffee, everyone settled in for a day of it. Of more later.
We could have had coffee, but there wasn’t a public toilet in sight, so I erred on the side of caution and only had a few sips of water on what was a very hot day. We found a low wall in the shade to perch on beside three old boys chatting. I think, from the scraps I could gather, mostly about their grown up families, (my French is still tres mal after all these years). Our friends arrived and set about buying beer but I wasn’t falling for that one. Tiny sips of water for me, thank you. In contrast, French families were arriving with chairs, tables and cool boxes, disappearing determinedly in the opposite direction from the square to baggsy places on the wide pavement further up the road. The crowd was not as big as I thought it would be, and we were relieved to be able to move around comfortably.
All morning cars and motor bikes were coming through the main (very narrow) street at 30kph. Sponsors, support, officials, gendarmerie, random white vans all got a weak cheer and a wave from the crowd. Teenage girls, poured into tiny white shorts and tops, giggled their way up and down the street, pursued by hopeful boys who were sent for water and croissants, and then hovered on the fringes of the girl’s circle, ignored until they could be of further use. All the time they cast desperate glances at each other, lest someone should gain an advantage. This dance continued until the first real happening of note.
Unexpectedly a white van stopped instead of shooting through the town. Two men jumped out and a disorderly queue formed with a bit of pushing and shoving from the teenage girls, who, operating on a sixth sense, had run squealing to the van before the doors were opened. The men handed out miniature cans of Orangina, one per person, so the girls drank from the first cans, and despatched the hapless lads into the queue for a second.
As the van drove off, a mime artist arrived on a bike and unloaded some parking cones and a unicycle. He juggled the cones badly but was an expert on the bike. I felt sorry for him as the audience was lukewarm, kids restless, and the temperature was about 28 degrees by this time so he was suffering. We applauded politely and put money in the hat. He was packing up as the Caravan arrived.
The carnival atmosphere having built up, kids were dashing about excitedly, large homemade placards scrawled with a rider’s name were distributed amongst young people. There are quite bitter rivalries between towns and even within towns, but luckily the support all seemed to be for the placarded Lauren Gina, so we guessed there would be no fisticuffs in this town. The Caravan took a good 30 minutes to go past us. We couldn’t believe the number of sponsor and police vehicles coming through or the noise, lots of hooting, in case we hadn’t noticed them. People were hanging perilously out of first floor windows, one hand holding on to the window. The baker had shut his boulangerie and was just about balanced on a small ledge above the shop window, having changed into a yellow jersey for the occasion.
It’s hard to describe the Caravan. It consists of vehicles, dressed up as carnival floats, large and small, noisy, funny, grotesque and entertaining. With loud music and huge papier mâché fruits, cyclists or random figures, all the sponsors had numerous floats, each one with bright young things throwing out goodies to the crowd.
Lots of keyrings, bucket hats, sweets were tossed over our heads and I realised that, in order to catch anything, I needed to be at the back of the crowd, now swelled with the restaurant goers, (‘Lucinda, do try to catch a bucket hat for your grandmother, Darling’).
Lucinda was destined to fail on the bucket hat front, but she seemed undaunted by her failure, smiling bravely as she missed out on hats, cans, keyrings and other ephemera.
My haul was biscuits, a keyring, and several bits of paper offering discounts on various entertainments, (mainly in Paris), while Mike got sweets, cake and a can of 0% beer handed to him from a float, which, given that it was travelling at 30 kmh, was quite a feat. For a cycle race, it’s a triumph of capitalist excess.
After the Caravan the roads cleared, maybe one third of the crowd dispersed either to have lunch, picnic or perhaps thought the Caravan was the main event and went home. Restaurant workers were summoned inside, and the seats filled up with comparisons of who had got the best haul. Waiting staff had the task of making sure everyone was fed before the peloton came through and they worked very hard to get two courses out to all the tables.
One of our friends, Saskia, had been on a scouting expedition and came back to suggest that we left the square and went round the corner where we could see the riders coming over the hill and sweeping down past our lovely little cinema. It was a great suggestion; we had the best view as you can see by the video below. All the time cars, scooters and motorbikes came shooting past, some with bikes on top, scooters with wheels and mechanics on board. Skoda was the main sponsor and it seemed like every car they’d ever built was on the road. A lady leaned out of her apartment to yell, in true town crier fashion, that the peloton had just left La Roche Chalais, a town 13 kms away. We waved our thanks and she beamed her way back to her TV, job done.
The volume of cars coming through intensified – there must have been over 300 cars in all and at least 200 motorbikes, but after a few minutes, the three leaders came past at 60 kph (allegedly), with a massive entourage and cameramen standing on the back of scooters.
Four helicopters appeared overhead in formation, and then the peloton came over the hill, flanked by outriders, followed by endless support cars, and open topped cabriolets marked up as medical cars. You might well wonder how they got anyone to hospital in one of them …
And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, was that. Gone in 30 seconds! The backdraught from the peloton blew off the hat I was wearing, and as the hat is my sister’s and she didn’t know I’d borrowed it (she will now), I had to try to prevent it being mangled by the traffic while maintaining the filming, so there’s a bit of a hiatus as I retrieve it.
Many thanks to Saskia and Graham for the videos of the Caravan, as my phone decided not to cooperate at that time, and thanks to Saskia and two Grahams for the BBQ later.
All in all a good day, with lovely friends and lots of spectacle, but I hope no one will expect me to go again, ever. There’s a silver lining - at least it wasn’t cricket.
Thanks for listening or reading, might back to Blackpool next time …
Sue! This was a funny, whimsical piece - yet the introvert in me was stricken with panic as each paragraph unfolded. Thank you - I think - for evoking so much emotion in me.
Love this, I felt like I was there with you, Sue!