Le Tour de France

What a wonderful day. Up in time to give the dogs a good ball-whacking in the garden, then off to Hérépian to buy some luscious things for lunch. Then we took up our places on the shady side of the street to await the arrival of the advertising caravane. For half an hour cars and speedy carnival float type affairs whizzed past at a rate of knots lobbing out freebies to the crowd. Anyone who could catch left with keyrings, hats, sweets, pens, blow up cushions, tee-shirts, madeleines and dozens of other such things.

Then we passed to the now-shaded other side of the street and had our lovely lunch. I'll leave blipper BrodieB to describe that. By 2pm the helicopters were buzzing overhead and the long awaited cyclists hove into view surrounded by police cars and motorbikes with cameramen perched precariously backwards on the pillion seat. The cyclists passed in a breath. It can't have lasted 15 seconds and then it was all over. Until next year that is, when we hope it comes by our way again. Now we await the winners and the drug test results and the subsequent winners.