Tour de France dans le Yorkshire

It was last weekend that the Tour de France gave us two days of the finest sports entertainment any county could want. We watched the whole jamboree go through from Sue & Ian's place on the the descent from Cragg Vale towards Ripponden. 

 Froggy and Emma in the front row, Ez and India (with the estate agent's pennant) camped overnight.

 The girls ran a charity stall all through the proceedings - the water was free. Someone actually bought the estate agent's pennants. The girls were raising money for a hedgehog charity.

 Meanwhile Froggy took the opportunity to repair one of his many BMX bikes. Men of a certain age became very interested. Gabs arrived at some point having run over from goodness knows where at what she called an unimpressive mile in seven minutes.

 The road had been closed to parking since midnight and closed to through traffic from 6 a.m. We stayed in the motorhome and in was very noisy from the road for most of the night.

 Gaby is practicing face painting,

 so it's useful to have a willing daughter. The tricoleur is courtesy of me.

 It's hours of just waiting and then the caravan of sponsors' vehicles races through. If one is lucky they chuck out stuff. I noticed that Teisseire fruit cordials were in the caravan, but waving a bottle of their stuff didn't lead to a free sample. Apparently one can buy it at Waitrose. I actually prefer Moulin de Valdonne, but Teisseire own it! So the only thing that was impressive about the caravan, to me, was the speed at which it drove through.

 Everyone had contributed something to the buffet.

Gaby moved onto other hapless children to perfect her face art. She did check that the colours were 'right', but it would only have been Belgium if the other way round - "That would be random".

 Hundreds of motorbiking Yorkshire cops and gendarmes preceded the bicyclists. I noticed a sinister van labelled up as 'Garde Républicaine'.

The leaders were just a flash, and then the peloton arrived (it means little ball or platoon). Of course today it's the main pack of cyclists in their teams. There's a magazine called Peloton.

It's all gone past in 5 seconds at about 60 kph and it was worth the wait. Next I opened a bottle of Saumur Crèmont.

The ITV4 presenter said that it's like having an Olympic Game taking place on your own street. When you're there, that is what it's like.

The two geezers in HVJs at the rear right opposite side of the road are from Yorkshire Water. No free water to hand out - miserable gits. Ez and India were doing that on our side.