A few more pics.

Les Chiens

As some people would know I like to look for themes in things and it would seem that the theme for our trip is dogs......

One of the things that we have discovered is that dogs are more than welcome to sit with their owners in restaurants. This has been the case in every country we have been to so far. They are always well behaved and just wait patiently for the meal to be eaten but it has taken us a little while to get our heads around the fact that they are there. We had expected that they would be shooed away but on some occasions even the chefs have come out of the kitchens to give them a pat!!

The other place that dogs have featured heavily is at le Tour. This is a little more ridiculous really as it is not really a good environment for them. It is very noisy and there are hundreds of thousands of people and we have seen quite a few become distressed (the dogs, not the people). One of the gendarmes who was speaking to Rod on the mountain stage said that it is the one thing about the tour that he hates and that every year there are quite a number of them killed by the support cars and motorbikes. Not to mention of course that it is really dangerous for the riders if a dog runs onto the road as Michael Rogers knows from his crash a few years ago when he was probably riding into the maillot jaune. A dog was also the cause of a crash early in the race this year. Silly really, these guys have enough to contend with with the number of people watching. No need to throw les chiens into the mix.

And finally, there seem to have been an inordinate number of dogs strolling past the barn with their owners everyday. It is situated on a lovely dirt road which follows a stream and is obviously a good walk for pet and owner. They will often stop and poke their head through the fence to say hello (the dog, not the owner) which led Col and I to have a ridiculous and lengthy discussion about whether they speak (bark) in French. We came to the conclusion that of course they do and figured that that explained the blank looks when we spoke to them in English. And, for the record we were drinking coffee at the time not wine so the ridiculousness of the conversation was probably more from being too relaxed and affected by the fresh air.

Off to Paris tomorrow so who knows what the experience with dogs will be there. Let's hope it is not the sniffer variety at Charles de Gaulle airport.

We've just pulled out a few more photos of the tour. Of course Lance will feature but there might be a couple of others in there as well........ will dig out more and post them soon.

Au revoir.

Photos of famous cyclists from Stage 11 start at Chambrey

Cadel Evans


















Alberto Contador

















Lance Armstrong















Chris Horner
















Mark Cavandish

















Jerome Pineau














Rodwardo Barbalownni

The job we all want...

The Vittel Girl...

Annecy

Just a short blog today as it is getting late and we are all pretty tired. We spent the day around beautiful Annecy. It is a very spectacular place with a beautiful icy blue lake overshadowed by huge mountains. It has been very very busy everywhere we have been as it is the summer holidays here so we are sharing all of the tourist attractions with everyone else on their holidays. We all agree that if our main reason for coming had not been le Tour we would have certainly come here at a different time. But, that said, we would not have given up our few days following the bikes for anything. But, back to Annecy! We spent the morning wandering around the beautiful cobbled streets looking in the lovely shops and eating the delicious crepes whereever we could find them. Then the Barlows ventured back to the lake to spend an hour on a paddle boat with, it seemed, the same 100,000 spectators that were previously on the mountain at le Tour. Even so, it was absolutely magnificent and the water is just so beautiful that the hour passed way too quickly. We have whiled away another few hours in the garden of the barn, drinking wine, eating lovely French cheese and still, again, listening to the soothing sounds of the gunshots coming from who knows where.........

No photos today as we have spent too much time shopping but tomorrow we are exploring the surrounds on foot so we may capture more on film.....even if it is only the local rifle range :) Friday we are driving back to Geneva and on the train to Paris for the last leg of our tour.

Miss everyone heaps. Bonsoir for now. xxxx

Happy Bastille Day

Well, it is Bastille Day in France but that does not stop the Tour from moving on. We have had a couple of wonderful days following the cyclists. Yesterday we drove to the small village of Flumet and walked two km up the Col des Saisses which was one of the category 1 climbs for the day. We had a wonderful time with a handful (about 100,000) of other spectators enjoying the caravanne and the cyclists as they rode by. Any normal person would have jumped off their bike and pushed up the hill but not these guys. They sauntered by as if they were out for a sunday ride around the lake. Luckily we were once again only 3 feet from Lance and the Radio Shack boys as well as Cadel (still in yellow), Andy and the HTC Columbia boys. It was a great experience standing on one of the hill climbs and just enjoying the whole Tour experience!

Today we drove to the larger town of Chambery to watch the start of Stage 10. It is quite different to be at the start. Many more people and in a much more confined space but still exciting and interesting. We were able to watch all of the riders as they ambled up to the start. Lance was the last rider through and only two or three minutes from the start - we don't know if that was because he just wanted to make a grand entrance or because he just didn't want to be bothered by potential stalkers who may have travelled half away across the world to meet him :) Strangely enough, we also bumped into a triathlon friend, Dave in one of the souvenir shops at the start. Who would have thought that we would travel half away across the world to bump into someone that we see regularly in Canberra. After a nice lunch we bid him au
revoir and travelled back to Annecy for a relaxing afternoon drinking wine, looking at the mountains and listening to gunshots (!) Anyway, enough rambling, here are some photos of the last couple of days. More later.

more photos

Rest day today but here are more photos from yesterday...... Off to the mountains tomorrow. Poor Lance!!!

Le Tour

We spent our first day at the Tour yesterday. We drove to Saint Julien de Genevoise early and set ourselves up to watch le carnivale and the cyclists.

Things we learned:

1. Standing on the side of the road with a blow up kangaroo (Kev) draped in an Aussie flag certainly attracts a lot of attention. Our friends Dave and Cath gave the boys Kev to use at the tour and we had lots of people coming up to check him out and have their photos taken. The kids even got a few nods from some of the (we assume) Aussie cyclists as they rode past.

2. The French people are lovely, particularly the gendarmes. We had a couple of policeman standing next to us for the day and they obviously love the Tour and all that goes with it as much as everyone else. The kids (and Kev) had their photos taken with them as you can see.

3. The cyclists ride very very fast. It is amazing that we stand for hours waiting for them to arrive and then they whizz past so fast that they are just a blur. Even more amazing was that the lead group were chatting as they rode!

4. Lance is amazing. We made a last minute decision to cross the road just before the peleton arrived and it was a wonderful move as the Radio Shack boys road past on that side and we were just a few feet from Lance. Just for the record he looks as good close up......

5. Yes, the French do drive on the right side of the road. Col, Cath and Rod are doing a great job of driving over here although there have been a couple of gutter jumping incidents and the roundabouts are a challenge. We are still all alive so that is the main thing.

Here are some of our photos including the close up of Lance and the group of Aussie women who stood with us for the day. Will post some more later.

Au revoir

The low door incident re-enactment

Just a short post to let you all know I am okay after the low door incident.


On our arrival at the barn on Saturday there was a nasty incident. As you may be aware, the average height of humans has steadily increased over the past 100 years. Staying in an old barn does pose challenges particularly to those of normal height like me.




As I was carefully looking down to watch where I was walking I followed a pigmy sized person (Colin) through the kitchen to hall door. Without realising it, I was walking into disaster. Don't worry folks, after about 3 days my head is not hurting so much and I can now see out of both my eyes again.

I think the Heinekens may have helped in the healing process... well for my fellow travellers at least... the "stop whinging", "stop complaining you big oaf", "watch where you are going boofhead" have now become a distant memory.

I have not walked though that door since as I have found it safer to walk though 3 extra rooms as an alternate route to the kitchen...

And the journey continues

Vive le Tour

Ok, so we are finally here in Tour county. We have spent the last two days in Lucerne in Switzerland where we ventured up Rigi by cog car and gondola. It was spectacular and a wonderful day out. Lucerne was very pretty but also a little frenetic and in this heat was very draining. We spent most of the day on the train to Geneva and then picked up our hire cars to travel to the barn near Seynod. The big boys were very pleased to discover that the cars were Audi A4s and very nice to drive!! We did take a little while to find our destination though despite having two Sat Bitches (with reference to PW) telling us exactly where to go. The barn is quite a unique and lovely place. I had always imagined that it might be like the place in the opening scenes of Inglorious Basterds and I really wasn't far wrong. If there is a knock at the door in the middle of the night I certainly won't be answering it!!

We will be catching our first glimpse of Lance (and others) tomorrow at the feed station at La Rippe which is around 93km in. At this stage we are thinking that Cadel may have the maillot jaune by this time tomorrow but with any luck the Radio Shack boys might have Lance up towards the front by then. Either way it will be good to watch!

Hmm, as we sit here drinking wine, we have just heard gunshots. I was only joking about Inglorious Basterds but now I am thinking that maybe we should jump in the A4s and get the hell out of here...... nah, we will just drink more wine and take our chances!!!

We are a bit behind on the photos. Here are the rest from Italy. Hopefully we will be able to post some Tour photos tomorrow.....if we make it through the night........

Bonsoir et allez Lance!

Hx