Montpellier - Le Tour again

Today it was back on the heels of Le Tour, the last chance for the sprinters to do their thing before the race headed into the Alpes.

We drove in as close as we could to the finish (Stade Yves du Manoir), getting to a supermarket carpark about 500m away.

Arivee Montpellier - Le Tour 2011

Next we decided to hike in and check out where everything was situated this stage of the race being a different format to the last one we had been to. It was fairly quiet as the day was quite grey and windy so we were easily able to get around and find a spot close to the future action. We sat for about 5mins or so deciding whether to stay put for the next 4hrs or to have a wander around. In the end wandering around won so we headed over to check out the merchandise stand 5m’s away. 5mins later we heard a loud crack and the log barricade we had been sitting on fell down with people falling on the ground everywhere. Unfortunately 1 lady had her foot trapped underneath with everyone else on top of it. When they finally got it off her it was really mangled and the bone was sticking out the top of the foot with a compound fracture. It was so lucky we had moved because that would have put a real dampener on our holiday. A few people fainted around her and we noticed later that more of the logs had collapsed – the police care factor was pretty minor. (sorry 'm a bad physio - no pics :( )

A riding tour group getting presented on the main stage

After that we continued looking at stalls and merchandise and decided to head back to the car to make some lunch before coming back to secure a position. Our spot turned out to be a great one, at about 75m to go. There we met another Aussie couple from Adelaide travelling a similar route to us over a similar timeframe. We exchanged details and then got down to the business of watching the race.

All ready in our spot

It was a 192.5 km stage starting in Limoux and arriving at Montpellier at around 5:15pm – earlier than the anticipated 5:30pm finish due to a strong tailwind. The stage was won by Mark Cavendish – the Manx as anticipated, with Cadel coming in with the peloton at around 29^th position, maintaining his 3^rd place in the overall classification 2’06” behind the leader.

Once all over we drove onto a new campground Le Floreal – still in Lattes, which was much nicer than the previous 2 nights AND had warm showers woohoo! We hung out at the bar and used the internet and finished the day with a homemade jambon (ham/pancetta stuff) and crumbed fried goats cheese salad YUMMO!