Only relevant in so far as we have quite a lot of property and land currently for sale on the side of today’s stage.
Apartment Le Rosay, Chinaillon
Plus others in Megeve!
I went along with my 7 year old (Jacques). I’m an avid follower of Le Tour. It’s nothing to do with trying to assimilate with the French culture, I’ve been following it since I started road racing as an 13 year old! As far as the 7 year old is concerned following the tour does
mean I can help him assimilate! We weren’t too ambitious, I wasn’t keen on spending the whole day stood by the road. The most important thing was to see the Publicity Caravan, the actual race itself is better watched on television. So here is a picture of our fairly nondescript corner (don’t mention this to the residents of the Col du Chatillon) of the race. It’s a Wednesday, we are 50 km from the finish, on a descent, so not a great place to be (the racers are travelling far too fast) and the weather is “showery”. And the place is mobbed. We arrived at 1345 hrs, the Police closed the road at 1355, the Caravan came past between 1415 and 1500 and the racers past at 1550 hrs. We were in a bar to watch the last (and crucial) 30 minutes of the race by 1615. We did well for promotional material, with the help of some friends our final tally was:
- 3 Polkadot sun hats (I have 3 children, so 3 were essential)
- A packet of crisps
- A bottle opener
- A neck warmer
- A newspaper
- A bracelet
- A bag full of Tour de France merchandise (we paid for this).
- A Le Tour Disney magazine.
In this magazine I found so interesting statistics about the Caravan.
The Caravan is 15km long, it has 160 “floats”, takes 40 minutes to pass by, passes about 10 million spectators, involves 600 people, it’s average speed it 40 km/hr, it sets off 1hr 45min in front of the race, throughout the day the race catches the Caravan so by the end of the race it is only 1hr ahead. The drivers drive on average 200km a day for a week over some of Frances most spectacular roads, the people that throw the merchandise at the crowds are specially trained to do so! The Caravan is 79 years old and over the 3 weeks it will distribute about 13 million bits of tat! So on that basis our 9 bits of tat was pretty good going!
Jacques took a little video, it captures perfcectly what you see when the racers come by!
Tour de France from Alpine Property on Vimeo.
Posted by Gareth 
