Stage One - A little excited

Stage 1 finally arrives, with a stranger at breakfast...Steve. Delayed 5 hours at the tunnel, so only arrived at 1am. Turns out he is a sports agent and happens to represent one of the Sky riders at the Tour...yeah yeah whatever, stealing Dean's interest with your talk of behind the scenes goings on in the world of sports management, whatever bigshot...sorry Steve, would I like what? To see if you can get me a pass into the start village to mingle with the pros as they prepare to start the stage? I think your great Steve.

This is obviously never going to happen. I'm actually set up to do it on stage 12 thanks to a great bloke (😄) who organised it but a pass on stage one, no chance.
Set off for Mont Saint Michel with plenty of time but it soon became apparent that this was another one road in and one road out location, so getting there would be tricky. It didn't help being held up behind the entire publicity caravan (more of which later) which was moving out to get going for the day. Eventually dumped the car 5km from the start and walked in. Flag (Union Jack on a 3m flag pole with Allez Allez written on it) was making its debut and getting lots of interest, shouts of Allez, Allez or Brexit or Anglais or like your flag mate and four Danes sang 'Rule Britannia'. I took up a spot to see the peloton make a ceremonial trip across to the Mont and checked my phone. 'I have a pass for you...if you want it'. I ran and screamed, maybe the other way round but definitely both. Before I knew it I was wearing a yellow wrist band and legally wandering around the team buses and cars as the riders got ready. Now I do realise that this isn't going to sound like a big deal but to me it was. I love this sport and these are my heros. I've also decided to opt out of normal life for 3.5 weeks to immerse myself as much as possible in this event and to live it from every conceivable angle I can, so it is things like this that are above that fan's eye view and make it, well special. So anyway for 45 minutes, I span round trying to take in (and photograph) as much as what was going on as possible. One thing all of the riders have to do each day is sign on. This involves going on a little stage and signing a board. I always felt very important signing on for a race. The signing on guarantees that every rider has to come past the grinning prat, still holding the flag at least once but annoyingly other people were there and some of the riders go off and see family and friends which is very inconsiderate. Anyway it was great and I loved it.

You will be delighted to know that the race finally started (it has been a while coming) and I nipped round to see them coming back off the Mont and towards the race proper. At which point the French
version of the Red Arrows went over. Back to the car and a 90mile drive towards Utah Beach. I will skip past an incident which involved a sweaty tshirt, flour from a baguette and a bottle of sparkling water and skip straight to the attempt to get anywhere near the finish....failed. I decided to head back to Saint Mere Eglise, site of the parachutist and team presentation to watch them come through about 18km from the finish.

The town itself was really busy, so I walked roughly another km out of town, to a nice spot completely on my own, with just flag and bobble hat for company. The first rule of watching bike racing is being prepared to stand on the side of the road for great lengths of time. The second is learn to accept the publicity caravan and enter into the spirit of it. The publicity caravan is a series of floats of companies linked to the tour, sponsors, local specific companies (Brittany Ferries) or places featured in the race (Bern). It lasts about 30 minutes and is normally 2 hours ahead of the race. The real appeal is the things they throw out. I've seen fights develop over key rings in the past. In another act highly unlike me and lest we forget sporting the bobble hat and holding the flag, I decided to actually enjoy it, waving almost naturally, on occasion smiling, shouts of bonjour and Merci every time another freebie was chucked at my feet. Those that don't know me could have easily confused me for someone actually enjoying it. It's a good job I don't care about this nonsense. If i did i wouldn't have set my bounty on the grass to take a photo and nearly pulled a hamstring due to too much bending down to collect the stiff thrown at me. On a slightly quieter day, i will run through my haul.

The next 90 minutes or so are split between updating the race position on the phone (i would recommend cycling news' Tour tracker), doing some admin such as posting a blog or taking it all in. The road is rarely quiet, motorbike Gendarme's racing to the next point to warn the riders, press and VIP's staying ahead of the race, various team cars moving to strategic points, rogue bits of the caravan, TV moving up to get a static shot and this all increases as the race gets near. It all gets faster and more urgent, no one wants to be the one that interupts the race. The next obvious sign is the TV helicopters which will come into view, on the road two Police motorbikes will always be at the front followed by tv motorbikes, and yesterday, some where in the middle of the press and TV where the the two leaders, not a chance of winning but doing there job of getting there sponsors on the tele for a few hours. They are followed by their own team cars, an official race car (always red) and depending on the gap to main peleton, a yellow neutral service car which does what it says on the tin. At the point they went past me they were also getting a timing update on the gap to the peleton from the yellow motorbike that flits between the two all day.

Just thirty seconds later came the 196 remaining riders, stalking to the two out front, leaving them out there until it's time for the sprinters teams to go to work and they are followed by an entourage of team cars and race officials that took over 2 mins to pass. Just like that it's over for the day, I walked back into town and had an ice cream as various messages started coming through that flag and bobble hat had both made it on to the TV coverage.

All in all a great day...just the 20 more stages to go.

Stat room
Miles covered since home - 495
Number of times the race gone past me - 2
Cheese of the day - yesterday's cheeky Camembert
Number of comments when I had the audacity to ask for 3 scoops of the same flavoured ice cream - numerous in English.
Tat of the day - a whole bag of the stuff 😄