Le Tour de France

In a surprising move, the Tour de France authorities decided to hold the Grand Depart for this year's Tour de France in London. The racing consisted of the Prologue, a 7.9km time trial in Central London, mainly around Hyde Park and Stage 1 of the Tour which started in Greenwich (after a gentle pedal through Central London to get to the start) and finished 203km later in Canterbury.

I basically dedicated the weekend to following everything the Tour de France had to offer and this began on Friday night with the Opening Ceremony in Trafalgar Square (which was very disappointing) but it was cool to see all the team buses and a few of the bikes and riders close up.



Josh near the finish line the night before, in front of Buckingham Palace.



A strange sand sculpture in Hyde Park, as if London has any hills.



Saturday was the day of the Prologue and there were a couple of UK riders that were expected to have half a chance so there was plenty of excitement and support around. We were there well before the start to get a position right on the rails so we could see the riders zip by. This meant we got to see most of them warming up, and the warm up consisted of churning out about half a dozen laps at a lazy pace (probably about 35 - 40km/h for these guys) so before they even thought about racing they had probably done over 50km warming up. To be honest, there wasn't a lot to see when the racing got going, just someone flying past on a bike every 45 seconds or so. Each rider was preceded by a couple of motorbikes, including a French or UK cop, and followed by at least one support vehicle and maybe another motorbike with a TV camera. There was a big screen set up in Hyde Park so we watched the last hour or so on that which was when all the good riders came through including Andreas Kloden who took the lead by a comparatively large margin of 13 seconds. With only a few riders to go I thought Kloden had it in the bag but then the current World Champion time trialist, Fabian Cancellara ate up the course and beat Kloden’s time but about 10 seconds which was incredible. He was threatening to pass the motorbikes on the corners because he could take the corners at higher speed, it was brilliant to watch.



A Liquigas rider working hard as he flies past us.



It all just got a bit too much for some....



Sunday's viewing wasn't quite as thrilling as we clung to the top of a fence to get a glimpse of the bunch as they powered over the start line. Was interesting to see all the support vehicles, team buses and a whole lot of punters cruising along on bikes behind everyone, obviously keen to try and do a stage of the Tour themselves which isn't a bad idea. There was supposed to be a big screen set up at Greenwich Park but we couldn't find anything so kicked off a game of cricket in the park which was a great end to the weekend.

The start in Greenwich.