Tuesday, 8 July 2014

The Tour de France

Last Friday was a 3 day holiday to Yorkshire for the Tour de France.

After checking into the hotel on the outskirts of Huddersfield it was a bus to the centre of Huddersfield.

















The square outside of the station was decked out in all things French!

A delayed bus due to road closures for a cycling event that evening took me and G to Holmfirth. The evenings venue was the Picturesdome.

Peter Hook and the Light was playing some Joy Division tracks and the first two New Order albums.

I've seen the band a few times now and the small venue was ideal to get close to the performance.















I was well pleased when the above photo was favourited on Twitter by Hooky himself :-).

You can check out a compilation of the songs performed in a video on my YouTube channel. The clips I took reminded me of tv footage from a music show in the 80s, The Old Grey Whistle Test.

The rain had stopped from the Friday and the sun came out on the Saturday.

A crammed train and we arrived in Leeds, finding a spot wasn't easy to view the support cars then the riders. Still managed to get some video of the action though for Stage 1.

The crowds remained and it was down to the Town Hall to see what was going on.
























A fiver was charged to enter the Town Hall for a glorified sales pitch! from small cycling firms. There were speakers through out the day and it allowed us to have a rest from all the standing up!

Sunday the weather remained good and it was Stage 2 to look forward too. G had worked out a spot on the ring road where the riders had to slow down! Otherwise they go past in a flash, if you blink you can miss them!

We got to the spot about 10.30am and claimed our spots to see all the action. The riders didn't turn upto around 2.30pm but by then the crowds were very busy.

On the Saturday we missed the promotions caravan but on the Sunday we were treated to all the wacky designed cars and vans.

My Panasonic Lumix TZ60 camera in hand I managed to catch the breakaway, peloton and support cars in HD slow motion video.
























Videos of the caravan and the riders can be found in previous posts, or find them on my YouTube channel.

Walking back to the car we took in some action on the big screen in the town square, it was rammed with loads of spectators taking in the action.












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