Thursday 5 June 2014

Le Grand Depart.

The Tour de France will be coming within a mile of the farm on Saturday July 5th and great preparations are afoot.   Ten thousand folk are expected to descend on our little area, all hotels and B and B's have been booked up for months ahead and all the roads around the area are to be closed from early morning on the day itself.

The farmer and I will not be going into our little market town to watch it - in the first place it is too far to walk there and back (for me particularly as I have limited mobility) and also I suspect that they will be past in a flash and it will all be over.  I understand that there will be 150 support vehicles too.

But it will put us firmly on the map for a short time and I think watching it on television might be the better option, for us at any rate.   Certainly lots of smartening up has been done, potholes in the roads, caused by a wet winter, have been repaired and roads have been resurfaced.   Well, we want to look our best if we are to be on the television don't we?

9 comments:

Willow said...

Sounds exciting and busy !
At least the pot holes got fixed up fast and the local economy will be boosted for a bit. It probably woud be comfy to watch from the living room on the telly ~ unless of course you want to be ~on~ the TV perhaps by chance while watching the race :)

Cloudia said...

How very interesting! I shall make a point of watching the first stage so I might see your countryside!



ALOHA from Honolulu
ComfortSpiral
=^..^= <3

Cloudia said...

Remember: NO ONE has unlimited mobility. The rest is just details!

Cro Magnon said...

The best bit is the pre-race 'caravan'. Hundreds of commercial vehicles that pass by, offering freebies to the roadside fans. The Race itself is best viewed on TV.

John "By Stargoose And Hanglands" said...

It's coming quite close to me too. I was recently looking at the details on the webpage - the times they expect to be doing is mind-boggling to a pottering pedaller like me. I guess they won't be stopping to go into churches and take photos. all in all a much more happy invasion than was taking place 70 years ago.

ArtPropelled said...

10 thousand people to stomp your beautiful roadside flat. (I'm admiring your header).

MorningAJ said...

So the way to get potholes mended is to invite lots of foreign cyclists to ride over them? I'm not sure that would work on our stretch of the M1!

The Weaver of Grass said...

I am now all the more determined to stay at home and watch it on television. Thanks for the warning - and for visiting.

thelma said...

Todmorden has been hosting a lot of events to do with cycling, the grandchildren participated on bikes a couple of weeks ago. All go up in Yorkshire ;)