Le Tour de France
We had the Tour de France come near by, so we went to see the excitement on the D909A, just
before they went into Hérépian. We had no idea that the Promotional Parade was more exciting
than the actual race itself. The parade of vehicles comes by about an hour before the bikes.
It consist of Gendarmerie (pronounced "Jgahn-Dahm" they are the French National Police), then
you see some plain cars of various support & officials, then come the vehicles that are done
up like floats or just painted with company logos & names.
The floats, cars, trucks & vans with things attached or painted up, pass by with music
blasting out. As they pass by, people are throwing out items to the crowds. I only got photos
of some of the floats & cars. There were about 60 floats & cars.
We were very lucky to get a wide spot in the road that we shared with a young couple & an old
man. When we got duplicate items that they missed out on, we gave them some & they did the
same for us, so we all got about the same items.
Before the parade, the old man had said something about helicopters & pointed towards the town
(or so I thought). As the parade started to come, 7 helicopters came around the mountain &
landed in the field, cleared out of a vineyard, right next to us. The old man must have
known about them & was trying to tell us that they would land where we were. The helicopters
were all carrying officials of the race & were had them all around us. 2 helicopters refuelled
from a truck down in the field. After taking a photo of the helicopters, my batteries died &
I missed the opportunity to photo the bikes.
The parade took about an hour to pass & the bikes went by in about 15 seconds. What an
interesting site to see. This is well worth seeing live, if you ever get the chance.
 Le Crédit Lyonnais gave us a cloth shopping bag |
 Disney Land Paris gave us a comic book |
 Skoda gave us hats |
 Team support vehicles with bikes |
 Simpsons gave us a Bart mask & a Maggie mask |
 Etap Hotels did not give anything |
 Xtra gave us laundry soap & scenting samples |
 Eurotyre did not give anything |
 Confédération Force Ouvrière gave us a note pad |
 Nestlé Aquarel gave us bottles of water |
 Bouygues Telecom gave us CDs for internet |
 Aujourd'hui gave us a cloth shopping bag with that days paper inside |
 Festina gave us a Neon Yellow armband for night biking |
 RMC gave us Bonbons candies |
Notice the refuelling truck on the right side is fuelling up the bird in the back.
These guys kicked up a lot of dust & dusted the grape vines. They all left just after the bikes went by.
The following day I was supplied with a fresh set of batteries. We went up into the Tarn & followed the route of the bikes. We found the spirit of the race was shown very strongly in the small ville of Anglès with a population of about 600. All of their displays had the colors Blue & Yellow & were throughout the ville. I got photos of several, but there were more.
In a very rural area, just before coming into Anglès, we came up on this site.
Bikes along the fence with names of riders below of some of them.
 Display in Anglès, right at the entrance of the ville |
 Up on a wall in front of a farm |
 Notice the 2 bikes hanging from trees far Left & far Right |
 The name ANGLÈS was spelled out on T-shirts |
 From a distance this guy looked real |
 Small bike on right among beautiful flowers |