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Didier Moutia's Travels
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Location Date North America 1580342400 Oceania 1500159600 Europe 
1374447600 - France
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Location Date Paris 1374447600 Alpe D'huez
1374102000 Gap 1373929200 Marseille 1373842800 -
Location Date Thu, 18 July 2013
1374155820 Wed, 17 July 2013 1374069420
Well the big day has arrived! The Tour will be climbing the Alpe d'Huez not once but TWICE.
The atmosphere on the mountain today is electric. Everyone is excited and there is lots of activity. We start by visiting the finish area, the place is a zoo. It is only 9:30am and already people have taken the prime spots around the arrival area. Considering the riders will only make Alpe d'Huez at 4:30-5pm a 9:30am camp out seems excessive.
We decide to walk from the finish line down the course to locate a decent place to park ourselves. We walk 1.2kms and find a great spot in front of a British run Chalet. With beer on tap, access to the Tour on TV and bathrooms we are set for this stage.
We spend the day having a few beers and watching the Tour on TV. In between times we see all kinds of characters traveling up and down the course. We see everything from vintage bikes to people dressed in animal costumes etc. This is definitely a festival.
Before long we are giving warning that the Tour Caravan is coming. The caravan soon arrives and it is crazy. We have every type of promotional materials thrown at us. And I mean 'thrown', one packet of chips was thrown at my head and bounced off back into the course. It is a crazy tradition but a fun one. You have not been to the Tour unless you have seen the Caravan.
We see a helicopter and its cameras pointed in our direction. Our pulses start racing, the tour is here! The anticipation is crazy as you wait to see the leading riders. Soon Christophe Riblon appears, and not long afterwards the remaining riders, many looking exhausted from the double climb.
As the riders were climbing our Czeck friends who by this stage were pretty intoxicated started making fun of the sprinters asking "Where is the THE Mark Cavendish" and "Sagan is dead". We had to laugh, especially when we saw these riders and how exhausted they were.
To our surprise we featured in the following Orica video. Look for us at the 20 second mark.
Well like all great days it came to an end. So we started the slow trip out of Alpe d'Huez and back to Gap. It took 3 hours to get out of Alpe d'Huez. We were glad that we ignored advice to wait until 10pm to leave, if we did this we probably would not have made Gap until 3 or 4am.
The atmosphere on the mountain today is electric. Everyone is excited and there is lots of activity. We start by visiting the finish area, the place is a zoo. It is only 9:30am and already people have taken the prime spots around the arrival area. Considering the riders will only make Alpe d'Huez at 4:30-5pm a 9:30am camp out seems excessive.
We decide to walk from the finish line down the course to locate a decent place to park ourselves. We walk 1.2kms and find a great spot in front of a British run Chalet. With beer on tap, access to the Tour on TV and bathrooms we are set for this stage.
We spend the day having a few beers and watching the Tour on TV. In between times we see all kinds of characters traveling up and down the course. We see everything from vintage bikes to people dressed in animal costumes etc. This is definitely a festival.
Before long we are giving warning that the Tour Caravan is coming. The caravan soon arrives and it is crazy. We have every type of promotional materials thrown at us. And I mean 'thrown', one packet of chips was thrown at my head and bounced off back into the course. It is a crazy tradition but a fun one. You have not been to the Tour unless you have seen the Caravan.
We see a helicopter and its cameras pointed in our direction. Our pulses start racing, the tour is here! The anticipation is crazy as you wait to see the leading riders. Soon Christophe Riblon appears, and not long afterwards the remaining riders, many looking exhausted from the double climb.
As the riders were climbing our Czeck friends who by this stage were pretty intoxicated started making fun of the sprinters asking "Where is the THE Mark Cavendish" and "Sagan is dead". We had to laugh, especially when we saw these riders and how exhausted they were.
To our surprise we featured in the following Orica video. Look for us at the 20 second mark.
Well like all great days it came to an end. So we started the slow trip out of Alpe d'Huez and back to Gap. It took 3 hours to get out of Alpe d'Huez. We were glad that we ignored advice to wait until 10pm to leave, if we did this we probably would not have made Gap until 3 or 4am.
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