TDF 09 and maybe giro...

[dain2772]

Hello

just wondering if there is anyone out there who has been to the TDF and/or giro before. I am hoping to catch a stage early in either or both races this year and I was after some advice as to the best way to do it.

ie, do you just book accom in a town, and stand by the road, or are there buses that can take you out along the stage? Can you stay a bit further away and get close easy enough?

Are there cheap tour groups that would do one or 2 stages??

cheers.

 

[dresch]

My little lady took me to watch Alpe d'Huez last year, it was absolutely awesome.

We booked on a tour (can't remember the name - American company). We were picked up in Grenoble in Southern France and driven by bus about 50-60km's up to a chalet at the top of the climb.

We watched the close of the previous stage on TV over a few lagers followed by a walk up and down the climb itself (hundreds of thousands of Europeans all camped out on the roadside on each of the switchbacks and even more in the town below).

Spent raceday sitting on the couch, willing Cadel Evans up each of the climbs with a couple of old blokes from Luxembourg who were well on the Schleck bandwagon.

10 pints of lager later the riders started Alpe d'Huez, the atmosphere was electric! Sastre made his charge, Evans did his absolute best to respond but this was where it was lost and won.

That evening we kept relatively quiet as my woman had a few too many Kronenbourgs and needed a rest.

The following morning we checked out of the chalet and back onto the tour bus down to Bourg d'Oussians (spelling?) to watch the start of the next stage. This was a bit of a non-event, apart from some twat asking Cadel for an autograph repeatedly only to be given a slap by Evans' security guard.

After the start we headed back to Grenoble to catch our train back to Paris.

All in all it was a very quick 2 and a half days, and it wasn't cheap (I think it was around 2400AUD for two nights accommodation, meals and transfers from Grenoble) for two people - but we don't regret it for a second.

Here's a pic from the balcony of our chalet at about the 1200m mark with Evans trying to put the hammer down with no support from Kohl, Schleck and I think that's Valverde.

 

[redhardtail]

cheaper alternative

firstly awesome photo dresch

my wife and i watched the time trial up Alpe D'Huez in 04 (i think it was 04).

We caught a bus from Grenoble to Bourg d'Oisans and walked with several other thousands or more people up the hill. We bought the ticket from at the train station/bus station. Bus was cheapish though we had some fun getting the tickets with minimal french.


We made to the 2nd corner or so - we had a long straight to watch the approach.

There was no shade, no toilets, no water and i paid something like $10 for a morning coffee. that being said it was awesome - we had some crazy kiwi's beside us, and we were laughing at the drunk and sunburnt german's, the local's with their poodles - some dutch or basque moron's ruined a number of photo's wagging their flag in the riders face (effectively blocking our shots) but was great.

 

[wa_shova]

Don't have much in the way of advice, but I will be at the penultimate stage of the TDF this year. Catching the TGV to Avignon then hiring a car, driving to Mont Ventoux and sleeping out overnight for the action. Then it's back to Paris for the Champs Elysee.
Don't really have the faintest idea what to expect but that's half the fun!

 

[leitch]

We (Ryan, Tristan23, Ryan's wife and I) caught a number of tour stages last year, most notably the Alpe d'Huez and the final stage on the Rue du Rivoli (with Daver and Nicho). It's a superb experience.

From what we and thousands of others enjoyed, I'd highly recommend hiring a camper van. We arrived in Bourg d'Oisans the afternoon before the Alpe d'Huez stage, and just parked on the side of the road at the base of the mountains. Be prepared to just park anywhere you can squeeze in - the road is lined with vehicles and every available space is taken. We spent the night before the stage drinking Kronenbourg, setting off fireworks in the middle of the road and joining in on a wild dutch communist party riot which involved some serious shenanigans involving the masses of traffic heading to the top of the mountain.

(The mountain)

The next day we rose at a reasonable time, and started walking. Two and a half hours later we were about a third of the way up the hill, sweating like pigs, carrying about 5 free Bouygues Telecom jerseys each and a carton and a half of Kronenbourg between us, and decided that this nice little tree-shrouded hairpin turn was far enough for us. We then spent the next 5 hours drinking beer, eating baguette and taking the piss out of the dutch. Oh, and begging like cheapskates for the attractive ladies in the caravan to through free shit at us (myself repeatedly being thwarted by the amazing scabbing power of the 10 year old kid next to me, and managing only to get a little packet of Haribo, a "Made in Australia" keyring, and a half melted processed cheese square).

Then came the riders. It was pretty full on. Like, it was really cool. Ryan told Cadel to "Get under it cunt" and "Give it some herbs", which was pretty great, but unfortunately it seems he took the "get under it, cunt!" to mean "don't stick to Sastre, you big girl!" - that was a bit disappointing. Then came the stragglers, but despite our incredible powers of persuasion and excessive use of the F-word, Robbie McEwan refused to do a wheelie. Another disappointment.

(The stragglers - note Robbie McEwan not doing a wheelie. Jerk.)

Anyway, after all the riders were gone, we basically just walked back to the van where we rested our sore, tired, scattered brains until the following morning. In the interests of this actually having some relevance and not just being a stupid story, I should probably point out here that it is NOT a good idea to drive your camper van up the mountain. Park at the bottom and walk up. We got to our van at about 6pm. 15 hours later there were STILL vans and cars coming down the mountain.

Anyway, the next day was pretty cool, too. We went to see the following day's stage start in Bourg d'Oisans. The cool part about this was that the pit area was very big and open, and so we managed to just climb the barriers and get up close and personal with the riders, which was really cool. We got kicked out on a number of occasions, but it was easy enough to just walk 10 metres up and climb back in.

As for Paris, well. That was cool. To be honest, nowhere near as good as the Huez stage given the massive policing and serious restriction of how close you can get to the riders. On the hills, you really can get to the point of touching the riders. Also, the crowds are just so freaking massive.

(Touching a rider - Jens Voigt)

(Being massively restricted - Paris)

So, in short.

- Do it, it's bound to be one of the best spectating experiences of your life.
- Take your bike - everyone rides up the Alpe d'Huez the day preceding the stage, or the morning of the stage before the riders come through - it's such a cool atmosphere, I wish I had been able to ride it on that day.
- Make the absolute most of it. Don't worry too much about looking like a dickhead Aussie, because the place is full of them along with dickhead Kiwis, Dutch, Italians, Germans, French, Brits and Americans - all plastered, all having a good time.
- Do it yourself. I'm sure it would work out cheaper to hire a van and pay for petrol and be able to cook for yourself than to pay a tour company, pay for accommodation, and pay for cooked meals because you can't do it yourself.

Have fun!

 

[dain2772]

thanks for all the advice. We will probably see the start of the Giro stage in Innsbruck but mightn't see much more of the giro, putting more effort into the Tour.

The camper idea sounds quite good actually.

So, is anyone else going to be around?

 

[dain2772]

well, we got to the start of the Giro this morning in Innsbruck. We saw Allan Davis getting interviewed and saw most of the riders signing on. Had a nice position on a corner a few hundred metres from the start. They weren't racing, but it was still good to see them fly by.

It has certainly whet our appetite for the Tour!!

Highlight was getting a picture with 'The Devil' of TDF fame....

 

[possum-magic]

When I lived in the UK, I did a few trips with these two companies, and couldn't recommend them highly enough:

Pyractif - based in the Pyrenees, they run a TdF trip every year. This year, Stage 8 and Stage 9 are near where Pyractif are based. After soaking up some of the tour, you can then go bag a few famous HC and Cat 1 climbs

King of the Mountains - based near Bourg d'Oisans (Alpe d'Huez) they also run a TdF focussed trip. They also have a relationship with another company based down near Ventoux, so you could potentially do a few rides around Alpe d'Huez, then head down to the Ventoux stage then shoot off up to Paris to catch the final day.

(Note: 'cause I'm only a bunny, I'm not allowed to post web links so just Google the above two companies if you want to check out their web sites)

 

[Ryan]

Well, I was going to post some stuff about last year but Leitch has it pretty much nailed down.

Key points are;

1) Do it. Even if you're a fringe-cycling fan, don't pass it up if you have the opportunity.
2) Go to the mountains. Because seriously, fuck being there for a flat stage and waiting all day just to see the peloton fly past for 30 seconds. Second to a mountain stage would be a time trial.
3) Van it. This is how the hardcore supporters do it and from what I can gather it still works out exponentially cheaper than paying for massively inflated hotel accommodation and food at every stage, even with fuel and rental figured in. You can see from dresch's how people pay to do it with tour companies as well; through their noses. We were at the same stage on the same day and paid $0 for accomodation and probably around $100 for food and booze between the four of us for 2 days. Although, dresch probably didn't have to sleep across the front seat of a van like Mandrew did.
4) Don't expect Robbie McEwen to do a wheelie. He's a big girl.

 

[dresch]

Definitely get a campervan.

We only joined a tour as we were on a very short timeframe and didn't have time to organise a van.

 

[dain2772]

Ok, so my tour is run and won, so I thought I should provide my experience for future attendees, particularly as it was a bit different from those already described.

We looked at a tour group, but being so disorganised, we seemed to be too late. We also looked at the Van idea, which seems good, but we were only going to see a few days and most places have a minimum of 1 week hire - in both cases also a bit outside of our tight budget (spending 6 months OS limits the splurge opportunities).

So we started off in Marseille for the start of the stage there. We took a prime position near the stage, and saw all the riders sign-on (including Lance who didn't actually sign anything!) and then ride past us. Cadel hid behind the powerbar stand for about 10 minutes so couldn't get a good photo. We didn't actually see the bikes go, because we waited to see Lance - no big loss.

We then hopped a train to Montpellier for the team time trial. In the morning we went into the centre of town to see the whole circus. In a moment of excited grabbing at a bottle thrown by a silence lotto mechanic, we knocked over a bike leaning on the other side of the fence from us. fortunately it was Vansummeren's and not Cadel's. The mechanic didn't seem fussed. We did get to see Cadel's road bike and time trial bike, close enough to touch which was awesome. We wanted to wait to see cadel, but also wanted to see some actual racing, so left to take up a position near the end.

We found a spot about 260m from the finish, right on the fenceline. Most of the teams rode along the other side of the road, but a few were on our side, close enough to touch. We came home with a huge bag of freebies from the marketing girls in the caravan.

We then found our way down to Barcelona to catch the finish of the stage 2 days later - the really wet one. We went to a point about 600-700m from the end, on a roundabout, which meant the riders came very close to us - in fact, a few times we had to pull our heads in to stop from hitting the riders. If this was a normal flat stage, we probably would have just had a bunch fly through, but because they were a bit more spread out we got a good 10 minutes of riders going past. They looked so exhausted, so wet and so over it. A few more freebies.

We also went the day after to the start that was in Barcelona, but just turned up 30 minutes before the start to see them roll down the street. Got a good view of cadel as he cruised past.

So no Alpe d-Huez this time, but this shows what can be done with public transport only, and not needing to find your way out of towns etc.

We are already planning our next tour, where we will follow it for at least a week. We would most likely do the campervan option (or at the very least a car) to get to some of the better viewpoints.

But the main thing is (as has been said already) that it was an awesome experience, for cyclists and non-cyclists alike.