Chasing Sean

From a Scottish perspective, this year was one of the most enthralling Tours since, depending on your view point, David Millar's stage winning, or Phillipa York's King of the Mountains and GC placing. Of course, Oscar Onley's GC performance surpassed expectations. But cycling is a team sport, and behind Oscar was Sean Flynn, previously of this parish.

Sonya and Colin watched the race unfold in stages 6, 7 and 8. Sonya's article precedes Oscar's climb up the general classification......

Colin and I have been avid Tour followers for as long as we can remember but until we retired actually being at the roadside was little more than a dream. Now, as two retired seenagers we can follow our dreams, so in early July this year we headed, once again, Franceward. This year was extra special because, in ERC’s centenary, we have for the first time, a former club mate, Sean Flynn, actually riding Le Tour! We have watched Sean learning his bikecraft from his early days in ERC as a wee lad.

We identified stages that fitted in with our other plans for this summer and on Tuesday 8th July, for stage 6, we headed for Caen and drove the reverse way round the TT route until we found a suitable place to park up. We found a farmer’s field, where other vans were parked, right on the route! As usual there was a party atmosphere.

We hadn’t been to a Tour TT before so didn’t know what to expect but Le Tour didn’t disappoint. We set off relatively early to cycle round the 33km course. Cycling on closed roads is wonderful. Negotiating the area round the start and finish areas was interesting. There we so many people. I’m very glad we were on solos, it would have been even harder on the tandem.

The ever-crazy Caravanne past throwing out things that you never knew you wanted. We have an ever-growing pile of Le Tour Caravanne goodies! We went back to the van and made sure everything was packed away, ready to drive away as soon as the Gendarmes would allow us. The TT was magical, we could see, over the wheat fields behind us, the riders and following vehicles approaching from quite a way off. The riders had to negotiate a sharp lefthand corner just before where we were standing, resplendent in our ERC kit and proudly waving our Saltire. For over three hours we cheered riders as they settled back down onto their tri-bars to find their rhythm again. Sean, on a kind of recovery day, saw us and gave us an acknowledgement. That was very special.

After the yellow jersey past us, we headed back to the van and were first in the queue to get out of the field which didn’t take too long.

We really wanted to get to Mur de Breton, the finish of stage 8, so it took a bit of careful planning where to position ourselves for stage 7. We needed to be somewhere fairly near the start in order to drive to Mur de Breton without being held up on closed roads. We arrived in Le Vey about 19:00 and drove up the climb and just after the KoM there was another farmer’s field perfect for us. The familiar party atmosphere welcomed us. In the morning we set off, again relatively early, to cycle the climb. It makes me smile when the people at the side of the road are cheering at me but it does mean that getting off and walking isn’t an option!

The riders were pretty split up as they past us. The speed they at which they went by us was phenomenal, faster uphill that I manage going downhill with the wind behind me.

First in the queue again for a, hopefully, quick getaway only to be thwarted by an over zealous gendarme. Once on the outside of Le Tour route though we headed to Le Mur de Breton. Stopping on the roadside on the 15km finishing circuit was banned but there were designated parking fields. We managed to find a space in Parking 1, which was right on the course, we were very lucky!

In the morning of stage 8 we cycled round the finishing circuit. There were still over 6 hours until the race was due but there were hundreds of people securing their spot at the side of the road on the famous Mur de Breton. The crowds did make climbing the Mur far more enjoyable with cheering and shouts of encouragement. We got to within 100m of the finish but were thwarted by security guards who insisted that we walked through a field at the back of the finish. Just as well we had spd shoes on. The rest of the circuit was absolutely beautiful with tree lined, smooth surfaced roads with virtually no traffic to contend with. Back to the van for a spot of lunch and a rest before heading to see Le Caravanne once again.

We were right at the end of the caravanne route which meant that we were thrown lots of goodies from some floats and nothing from others. We now have so many bucket hats but sadly not a new Skoda one for Colin. The caravanne was late and the riders had a tail wind so the two hours we though we would have to get to the bottom of Le Mur was shortened to 20 minutes! We managed to cycle half of the 2km but a gendarme stopped us and told us to walk in no uncertain terms and you don’t mess with a gendarme! So running it was. We got to the corner just in time, managing to get to the front because, as luck would have it, they were just positioning the final barriers stopping team buses and support vehicles and allowed spectators onto that section just as we arrived. Perfect! Our Saltire was noticed and prompted messages from friends back home watching on TV. We spotted Sean in one of the largish groups. Once all the riders had past our spot, the barriers had to be moved to their new positions to complete the circuit. Once again, we managed to get to the front. The atmosphere was electric and the cheering almost deafening but exhilarating. The race finished we made our way to the Picnic Postal NL team bus and waited for Sean. On his arrival he got straight onto the bus but spotted us and came out to chat to us and went to get us team bottles.

Stage 8 was our last live stage. Three days of Tour chasing was enough for us in the heat this year. I would certainly recommend Tour chasing but here are a few tips: Ensure that you have enough fuel, water, food and drink with you, there just isn’t much time to spare to have to stock up on anything. Plan your route between stages carefully ensuring that you don’t get caught up in having to wait for roads to reopen. The famous climbs are always much busier but not necessarily any better viewing than the other less well-known tough climbs where you are more likely to get a good spot and be able to leave more easily. Don’t expect a shower but do expect to have a fantastic experience.