Tuesday

Yesterday turned out to be much livelier than I had anticipated, in a good way, that is.  It was gorgeously warm and sunny with a bit of a breeze.  I had a nice slow start, washed and dried my hair, made some ginger cookies and started off a load of dough in Thermione.

Once dressed, I meandered out the back to see that people were already starting to collect along the side of the road and were claiming their place with garden chairs, etc.  I had a chat to a few folks and then went inside.  A little while later I stepped out the front to find that next door neighbours (whose side garden runs along the main road but raised up so the view was great) had a wee party going with drinks, crisps and a barbecue, to which I was generously invited.  Of course, I accepted promptly and had a really good time for the next three hours, chatting, joking, waving to people I knew along the road and so on.  I saw lots of my class - in fact, two were at the party.

It was quite an event.  In my innocent ignorance, I thought it would be a bunch of extremely fit people pedalling very quickly on bikes with maybe an escort vehicle in front and behind.  Dear me, no!  It all started about two hours earlier with a van warning people to stay on the pavement and not pick things up off the road.   ????, thought I.  And then along came the carnival.  It was all advertising, of course, presumably by companies that were sponsoring the Tour, but it was fun, bright, colourful and most enjoyable.  And for the next few hours, in dribs and drabs, along came a wide mix of cars, vans, lorries and so on, nearly all left hand drive, with drivers and passengers who were obviously having a whale of a time, some chucking samples out of the windows - boxes of tea bags, sweets, all sorts of bits and bobs..  Then came all the support services including gendarmerie, police, ambulances, etc.  Then cars with spare wheels, tyres, bike frameworks, etc, etc, etc.

 Before - people gathering by the route.

 One of the more unusual floats.  The children loved it.

And finally the excitement rose, along came seven helicopters, one of which was flying extremely low, and whoosh - the cyclists were past and gone.  All in a clump, all doggedly determined and paying absolutely no attention to anything else but the race.  And that was it!  Blink and you'd miss it!  Going for a 'comfort break' was right out of court!

And then I remembered the dough!!!  Luckily it had reached the top of Thermione and no further and I was thankful that I had done a 500g amount and not a 750g.  Waste not, want not, so I carried on and it has actually made jolly nice bread.

Dave and Anna had turned up and were also invited to watch from the royal box, so once it was over I invited them in for a cuppa and a nice chat and they made inroads into the ginger cookies I had made earlier and posted about on t'other blog.  That also made the day very pleasant and special.  It felt odd to remember that while in our own very little area of the world all was festivity and celebration while half a mile away people were going to work as usual and getting on with their daily routines.

And I caught the sun!!!