Tour de France

Having said that after watching it in 1994 (or whenever) and finding it rather underwhelming I happened to be in Ashford 20 mins before the cyclist were due to be passing through. Seems that the turn out of spectators in Ashford wasn’t exactly great (compared to Goudhurst, Tenterden and Canterbury anyway) so the special free parking was hardly being used. As I had the camera in the boot it seemed a shame not to…

I’d missed the Caravan or what ever it is called so no chance of some free sweets for me. I saw the tail end of it which seemed to consist of a load of vans selling bags of tat for 20 quid.

This was followed by endless French police vehicles who appeared to be full of rather miserable looking people hairing it around the roundabout the wrong way (although I guess it was actually the correct way for them). Interesting to notice that the British police motorbike riders were in full leathers with big reflective jackets while the French police bikers were in short sleeved shirts.

After a while, this guy turned up apparently in the lead
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No idea who it was or where he finished though but he was in a small group of 3 who had broken away from the pack by quite a few mins at this point.

A few mins later the other 180 odd riders came past in a blur – totally impossible to work out who was who and it was all over within 10 seconds or so. Impressive yet a bit of an anti-climax all the same. Wandering back to the car the council workers were already out in force changing Ashford ring road from a mess of closed lanes and confusion back to the normal – a mess of closed lanes and confusion…

Couldn’t help notice the ad hoarding outside the car park though. I reckon they would get a hell of a lot more people watching if this lot did the Tour de France.

Rest of my photos are on my Flickr page. Don’t get too excited – I didn’t take many