Day out at Le Tour de France London Prologue 2007
January 3, 2008
I was up in London for the Saturday (7th July 2007) Prologue of Le Tour de France in London. I thought it was fantastic! Up very early I made my way to Marble Arch. At this point it was pretty empty and quiet, but as I walked around I found some people already placing seats along the course. There was still lots of spaces, though so I decided to walk it, from Hyde Park to the finish, boy that was a long walk. On my way I went through a very busy area where people were shouting and screaming to encourage you to buy their wares. Pretty much everyone was at the finish and I could hardly see the track. So I chose to turn back to find a better location.
Eventually I plonked myself in what I thought was a good position, a clear view of the riders coming round a bend with a bit of straight before me. Yep it was good, got a lot of good shots of riders practising. But I later found I was right next to the hospitably area and once the procession (a load a French cars and float-type trucks coming down the road at 100mph throwing all sorts of promotion junk at you or some nice ladies dancing for you - see below :-)) and the time trials started I saw very little. Hiding in their posh exec room they all flew out and completely blocked my view of the bend and straight.
So I was left with small gaps in the crowd, hence why my pics are of the cyclist side-on. I had to time my shots very well to get anything. And the resulting images are just a “handful” compared to what I did take - I got so many photos of just tiny bits of the cyclist in shot where I was either too quick or too slow with the release button. It was a good test though and luckily we had a nice policeman nearby and people seem chatty.
I didn’t stay all day, my legs and feet were aching from standing in one spot for hours but it was very cool and hope they do it again at some point.
Quick tip to the organisers though: more bridges over the track. I had to queue to walk over one and was there for 25mins!
More pictures came be found here.
Tour de France:
www.letour.fr/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_de_France
Tour de France London:
www.tourdefrancelondon.com/
.photography site: squashyfrog.com
.photography blog: blog.squashyfrog.com
.flickr photostream: flickr.com/photos/koltregaskes
.deviantart gallery: koltregaskes.deviantart.com
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