Saint Lo was to be the start of Stage 2 of this year's tour, only 45 minutes on the motorway for us from our stage 1 accommodation. The motorways range from speeds of 110 to 130kph. Conditions were wet drizzle - another disappointing euro summer's day.... Apparently tho, Normandy is not known for its glamorous summers and tends to cop similar conditions to the UK which makes sense seeing as it is horizontally the same height.
We arrived at Saint Lo around 11am, we missed the caravan parade but no dramas there, we then headed down to the start line - got an espresso and then tried to sneak into the rider's area again. This time the buses were spread out a little more and right round the back of the bus park there were no spectators or officials so we just opened a gate panel and walked into the restricted area :)
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| Getting amongst it again |
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| Mark Renshaw's S5 - one of my favorite bikes! |
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| Alejandro Valverde
There was a lot of excitement around Dimension Data since Cav was wearing the yellow jersey, second was sky whom had a massive following also!
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Start at Saint Lo - after the riders had left
After the start we bought some Le Tour merch in the form of a couple of tshirts for 30euros (pretty expensive but had to get something...), and went to the pub to have a beer for lunch and watch some of the tour unfold since the weather was pretty miserable, before we headed up to the finish - about 100km north.
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We were at the finish line about 1.5hr before it was supposed to finish which was good to see some of the caravans come by, a little bit of entertainment in the form of food giveaways etc. and watching the race unfold on the big screen. Peter Sagan went onto win this stage and the big news was Richie Port suffering a puncher a couple of km's away from the finish which lost him a couple of minutes.
After the race we just headed back to the car and then drove back to our workaway at Falaise, a couple of hours drive.
We got back to our workaway and found we'd made it onto the Cycling Maven's vlog from the interview the day before :) - perfect birthday present for me!
**CLICK IMAGE BELOW TO VIEW VIDEO**
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