Why the Tour de France is so popular

The Bretagne and Normandie tourist boards couldn't possibly have bought the wonderful coverage they got over the two stages of the Tour de France. The weather was fantastic for "our" stage and the next day the TV coverage couldn't get enough views of the Mont St. Michel in a sparkling sea.

The Tour de France's 20 stages are seen by around 10 million people each year. From the outside it always seems as if everyone wants to get close to the dramatic action; the reality of course is rather different ...

Two hours before the riders depart the Caravane gets going, this is the procession of uniquely French commerces advertising their products and services in imaginative, strange and frankly bizarre ways. The reason many people go to watch Le Tour is to get the free giveaways that are passed, thrown or hurled from the various elaborately modified vehicles in the caravane. I've seen families at the roadside chase all over the pavement for these freebies, collect their spoils into a shopping bag, jump into their cars and head off home before any cyclist is within 30km.

We do go for the cycling but on Tuesday we seemed to have got ourselves in a prime spot for the freebies - either that or our union flag was being used for target practice as several items landed directly on our chairs without us needing to pick up or catch them.

Here's our entire haul:

In no particular order it was:

• A Carrefour King of the Mountains cap
• 2 Skoda sunhats
• A copy of the paper Aujourd'hui (scary title: "Sarkozy revient")
• An ERDF beer bottle cooler
• A packet of Belin tomato and mozzarella snacks
• Festina wine gums
• A packet of madeleines
• Haribo sweets 
• Le Journal de Mickey Mouse
• 2 copies of an Alcatel mobile phone promotion
• A "welcome to Yorkshire" wrist band (the 2014 tour starts in Yorkshire)
• A Moi, Moche et Méchant 2 facemask (it's a film ,,,)
• An Etap hotel inflatable cushion
• A postcard of the French cyclist Thomas Voeckler
• A promotion voucher for Courtepaille restaurants
• A pack of Kléber fridge magnets
• A copy of Ouest France in a matching bag with a matching flag
• A packet of mini dried sausages
• A clothes washing liquid sample
• A Cofidis keyring
• A Luxembourg keyring (no idea ......)
• A sovenir copy of L'Equipe 
• 3 bottles of Vittel water
• A copy of Vittel's "Eau-ficial" newspaper

Le Tour en Bretagne

We went to cheer on Chris Froome in yellow today - got a good spot just on the way out of St. Nicolas de Redon:

Horses - on the Tour de France .... ?

Giant Truck tyre anyone ?

Fortunately this didn't happen when the race was crossing

Here they come .....

There is a corner of a foreign railing that is forever supporting Sky Procycling

The obligatory five man breakaway out front by 4 minutes

Sky leading Chris Froome at the front of the Peloton

Backmarker

Fortunately no-one was in the broom wagon today ....

A sad day

Our little community has suffered a devastating and tragic loss.

Yesterday morning Nicole came round very early in floods of tears to tell us that our neighbour and her father-in-law, Lucien, had been killed the previous afternoon in a road accident. He had been cycling to Questembert to collect his car from the garage when he was hit by a lorry.

Lucien was the first person to come round to welcome us when we moved here, bringing a basket of plums; he was my go-to person for any advice on gardening and he was a pillar of our village. We saw him in his garden nearly every day - even if we didn't have a chat he always looked out for us and waved.

The story behind what happened is just so sad. There is a great bunch of "Vieux gars" who we meet regularly at Claudette's Fete de la Village which took place last Sunday. One of these is Armandin who is 80 and lost his wife last winter; during the fete he was responsible for producing carafes of wine at regular intervals - "I'm not a sommelier, just a caviste" he said when I complemented him on his standard of service. Lucien was 76 and led the team of chefs on the barbeque at the fete; the day afterwards Lucien was going to drive Amandin to Beauvais, near Paris, to stay with his sister for a week. They got as far as Questembert (about 10km away) when Lucien's car developed a problem and they had to leave it at a garage and get a taxi back. Lucien was on his way to get the car to restart the trip when he was killed.

We will miss him enormously.

There's always Paris

This post has been delayed from 6th June
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"Allez Richard, Allez Richard, Allez Richard"

Court Suzanne Longlen was packed and rocking; 9995 French supporters were roaring on Richard Gasquet against Stanislas Wawrinka, the famous pub quiz answer ("Name any male Swiss tennis player apart from Roger Federer").

We were sitting in front of the three Swiss supporters in the crowd who were gamely yelling "Komm on Stani"whenever the French chanting began. We were being British and neutral, admiring the great shots from both sides as Stani fought back from two sets down to take the game into a fifth set.

The day of fourth round matches had started with a comedy outing between Tommy Haas and Mikhail Youzney. Haas, formerly the number 2 ranked player who had slipped to 372 in the world and in 2012 was in advanced negotiations with the BBC to retire and act as a pundit for their Wimbledon coverage. In the event he got a wildcard for Wimbledon and despite losing in the first round he staged a Lazarus like resurgence in the rankings to make 12th seed for Roland Garros. Youzney started badly in the warmup and got worse. The highlight was his racket smashing exploits - see here on youtube - although it was a measure of how badly he was playing that it took nine smacks to break his racket.

The scoring system in tennis makes individual points really critical - Bethanie Mattock-Sands found that out at 3-1 30-15 in the first set when she missed a shot into an empty court to get two points for a 4-1 lead and ended up losing the game, the set and eventually the match to Maria Kirilenko.

And, despite the 9995, Stani finally beat Richard 8-6 in the fifth set to go through to the quarter finals having hit 92 winners over the five sets.

Lost in Translation

In Paris for the tennis we went to a restaurant called "Sur le Fil" in Montparnasse.

Helpfully the menu in the window had a translation in English, these days I only read the English to identify amusing translation but on this occasion my French wasn't up to "Cannette de Barbary" so I read on to the English version underneath.

Not much more helpful as the translation was "A can of Barbarisms".

Thanks Bing or Google Translate or whoever was responsible for that.

Actually it's Barbary Duck - and it and the restaurant were fantastic.

Déja Vu

There's a great song by John Fogerty called "Déja Vu All Over Again" - I think the title's irony is unconcious.

So no surprise that, lumbering back with the trailer and car fully laden I was again pulled into customs at Portsmouth last week ....

"Any guns, explosives, knives or other sharp objects sir?"

No, just a washing machine, a dryer, 300kg of imported Japanese sculptured granite, a twenty year old lawnmower recently fully renovated, a fifty year old oak desk, a ladder, four boxes of Christmas decorations, a huge four lane Scalextric layout and boxes and boxes of stuff we hadn't seen for three years.

All things from the house in Fleet - funny the things you leave behind when you move and then decide you still want!

Questions, questions

“So are things cheaper in France?” – it’s a question I’m often asked, on this occasion by Sylvia at Fox Garden machinery (our 20 year old Hayter mower – “by appointment to HM The Queen” - had broken and the combination of age and foreign make meant I had brought it back to the UK for service and repair).

Well, it all depends. My personal view is that, as a huge generalisation, the French like the sales process and they certainly like to think they’ve been sold a bargain. If the bargain lines up with what you want then yes, things can be cheaper in France. But otherwise there still seem to be big overheads in the process and, regrettably in many ways, it’s cheaper to return to the UK for many of our purchases.

“Can’t you get these in France?” asked the delivery driver who brought us the shower screens. He made a good point when I said that we could but the cost was higher and it seemed to me that distribution costs were a major part of the difference – “isn’t the price of Diesel much cheaper over there?”.

One item is that it’s almost always necessary to pay for in France is delivery, regardless of the size of the order or the distance travelled. The UK kitchen appliances arrived in the four hour window on the day we’d requested two months earlier (actually five minutes early) with, of course, free delivery.

Customer Service is valued in France but in a slightly skewed way to my way of thinking. I buy as little as possible from our local DIY place, Weldom. Not because it’s prices are too high (which they are) but because finding anything there is made so difficult by the staff. Not that they are unhelpful – quite the opposite – browsing is made nearly impossible by the continual requests “Have you found what you want?”; “Can I help you with anything?”; “Are you OK there sir?”. The shop must be overstaffed - there is usually only one checkout open and once I counted 11 floor assistants trying to help the dozen people in the shop.

On the plus side as I prepared to come back to the UK this week I had a call from Jacqueline at Mecadom who maintain and repair – Hayter excepted – all our garden machinery. The lawn tractor has a hard life cutting our 6000m2 and had lost all drive down the field, I’d asked for a service and urgent repair as the field was rapidly becoming a knee high savannah. “We had to replace the courroie”; “Ze Belt” she added when I looked puzzled. When I complimented her on her English she said she couldn’t speak it at all but ¾ of the manuals she had to order things from were in English so she knew the names of lots of parts. Despite the huge backlog of machinery in the workshop when I’d taken it in they’d turned it round in eight days, charged me less than the UK cost, not charged me for fitting the belt and found me a spare fuel tank cap for free (must have left ours on the field somewhere after the last refuel ….).

So, yes, there are things that are cheaper in France and customer service can be good but, often, you have to look hard.