Day 7-Stage 4 of the Tour de France

First of all, hope you're having a happy 4th of July!  My day started off terribly.  I've been fighting a cold that I must have caught on the airplane and I've been getting worse each day, I was almost at the "just shoot me stage."

However,  the main reason we come to the Pyrenees is to watch the Tour, so I sucked it up, and after a slow start we were on the road by 10 AM, heading 174 kilometers to the north to the town of Nagoro, where Stage 4 was ending on a automobile race track.

The ride to Nagoro was beautiful passing through the Armagnac area which meant plenty of vineyards, sunflowers, and corn.   There was absolutely no traffic other than some farm vehicles.

This is a view of the final kilometers of the race, the last three of which sere on the Nagoro Speedway.  Tickets to sit on the bleachers were free, but we decided to avoid the crowds and find a viewing spot just outside the town.  Google Earth is wonderful for such planning.

We were lucky enough to find a place selling sausages and beer, so we didn't have to go to our backup lunch plan which would have been a baguette, with camembert cheese, and chocolate. We have two more days of tour watching so I'm sure that menu will be revisited.

A caravan or parade of Tour sponsors always precedes the riders, usually by two hours.  The sponsors throw SWAG to the fans who sometimes  come to blows over these for the most part useless items.

This big guy is always on the first vehicle in the caravan to come by. The yellow jersey, symbolic of the fastest rider in the elapsed time completion is sponsored by a French bank, LCL.

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Joni and I modeling some SWAG, a polka dot T-shirt.

The riders usually follow the caravan by two hours.  The nature of this particular stage, very flat, turned today's race into one for the sprinters.  In addition to that factor, the next two stages will be through the very steep roads of the Pyrenees.  The riders wanted to save their strength for the upcoming mountains so there was really no competitive racing until the last 10 KM of this stage.  

The peloton set a very slow pace, more of a parade than a race. There were no breakaways, and consequently all 174 riders were tightly bunched together until the last few KM, Then all hell broke loose. I think that within 10-15 seconds all the riders were past us.

The rider in the polka dot jersey, also known as the king of the mountains, is American Neilson Powless. 

The last rider passed us at 5:30 PM, we watched the finish on my iPhone and then headed back to the Hôtel d'Angleterre, just in time for another fabulous dinner.

 

A great day in the Pyrenees, my cold was much better by the end of the day, I'm glad Joni didn't shoot me, and tomorrow we do it all again...in the mountains.