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A Tour de France




       I’ve  just  been  glued  to  the  “box”  for  the  last  3  weeks  watching  the  TDF,
       because of the time difference here in Australia I have to record the stages
       and watch in the mornings before I hear any results on the news. It’s on the
       news a lot here as there are some many good Aussie riders including the very
       unlucky Ritchie Porte who crashed out so badly and who Eileen and I and Dot
       Fuller saw win the Tour down Under in Adelaide earlier this year.


                                          It reminded me of when I first saw "Le
                                          Tour’. It was back in 1960 along with Roy
                                          Chittleborough and Bert Colllins. We flew
                                          to  Paris,  stayed  one  night  there  and
                                          took  the  train  to  Avignon  where  we
                                          arrived fairly early in the morning. We
                                          rode  about  15-20  miles  to  await  the
                                          arrival of the riders. Within a few hours
                                          there were thousands of people there.
                                          This was quite a famous stage or should
                                          I say infamous in that the 3 time world
                                          pursuit  champion  Roger  Riviere  was
                                          descending following the Italian Gaston
                                          Nencini who was a great descender and
       unfortunately crashed over the edge, broke his back and never raced again,
       I believe he spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair.


      As you will see from the ‘photos of Roy and I and Bert that this was before
       cyclists rode everywhere in Lycra racing gear, we only rode in cycling togs in
       a race, we also had small panniers and mudguards on our bikes. People rarely
       seem to go on touring holidays on bikes these days and in my view they are
       missing out big time.


      The ‘photo of Bert on his own is of him crossing the border into Italy from
       France, no lycra and even no shirt “sacre bleu”.

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