So, as I mentioned up there ^,I've been on holiday in the Dordogne.
Just missed the Semaine Federal too, buggrit. The village up the road
from our camp site, Daglan, was having its annual fair week, which
involved all sorts of fun, music, artifices de feur and what have you.
And on Monday was a Cours Cyclist, or bike race.
Despite the rain I persuaded Mrs. Hall and our son, Brendan, it would
be a fun thing to watch, so we tootled of on our bikes to have a
gander.
Daglan is not a large village. A huit a huit convenience store, a
baker (natch) a couple of bars, lots of artists, a slack handful of
houses. But for this race they'd got:
Half road closures
Publicity caravan
Start hut
PA
Lead car
Moto out riders
A field of 50 or so riders
Ok, the publicity caravan was 3 cars done up with pink paint, old oil
drums and bailer twine. And one of the moto outriders was a Mighty
Kawasaki with only 3 cylinders out of 4 firing, bits missing and
exposed electrics.
The starter marshalled the riders into 3 groups (cat 1 & 2, cat 3 & 4
and what looked like vets (beardy fat frenchmen on expensive bikes).
Only 30 minutes after the allotted time, they started the parade lap.
The PA cut out at the wrong moment so every one went off in a bunch,
rather than in 3 distinct groups. Never mind. Then onto the racing.
The road was wet, and going through the village had a section of pave
- one local claimed it was _exactly_ like Paris-Roubaix. The first
casualty soon walked back to the start, bent back wheel and bloodier
elbow. Then we saw a rider headig back on an old shopper bike,
carrying his front wheel, to return a few minutes later with a
presumably new front wheel. The Mavic support car obviously couldn't
make it that day.
Watching racing in the peeing rain isn't _that_ exciting, so we
drifted along the course, diving for door ways as the three separate
groups came round. The noise of the Mighty Kawasaki served as a good
warning. Eventually we were at the road closure with its custodian -
a gnarly local in a raincoat, parapluie and an arrow-on-a-stick in his
hand. He waved this with gusto at people tryingto go the wrong way. As
we arrived he was in a stand up row with a taxi driver (quelle
surprise) who thought the closure didn't apply to her. The arrival of
the vets' gruppetto proceded by the Mighty Kawasaki cut their dispute
short.
We hung around for a few more laps, then toddled off in the rain.
Top stuff.
Tim