Tour de France Fever

As you may have noticed there’s a sports event called the Tour de France going on at the moment (well, you’d know about it if you were in France). It’s been down here in the Pyrénées for the past few days and I’ve seen two stages of it this week. This morning was stage 18: Salies de Béarn to Bordeaux. I went there with my daughter to get a glimpse of the riders as they signed on for the race at the podium and soak up some of the atmosphere (and some of the free gifts from the ‘caravan’).

Alberto Contador, the race leader for the moment

Beautiful weather and enormous crowds made it very exciting and great to witness. The Tour comes down to the Pyrénées every year, so if it’s not actually passing our front door like it did in 2008, it’ll be somewhere very near with the opportunity to see it first-hand at least once or twice.

Rooftop decorations in Salies de Béarn

Salies is a very picturesque Béarnaise village which makes for a very ‘intimate’ crowd in it’s narrow streets! A great place for a ‘depart’ in the Tour.