almost no dinner and no hotel
On a what should have been a nice gentle journey on pleasant back road to the finish, and the intimidating Plateau-de-Beille things started off a little sour.
The French police were clearly making sure the tour traffic off route was being good, there were 3 speed traps set up and the only cars pulled over were tour ones.
Going the same speed as the car in front I was pulled over and warned to slow down. Thankfully being English and not really understand what was being said saved me little.
Once on the mountain I sized up the finish and decided that there was no real good shot within the last 2km, no good hairpins to catch them coming round and worse the finish straight was slightly blind. The last 25m to the line curved away round a corner blocking a good shot.
I ended up walking down about 40m past the line and caught them coming up to the line, I had a slightly too long a lens on to get a good pan shot, the 70-200, but it meant that I caught the sprint for first place well.
Then once the first few were over the line I waited for the rest to come over the line while the presentations went on. This meant I caught all the british riders coming home and most importantly Vino crossing the line after cracking completely out on the course.
But the day was not done, it then took over 4 ½ hours to get back to the hotel, most of it spent queueing to get of the Plateau-de-Beille, not a happy time as the hotel closed for check-in at 11pm and I got with just 15mins to spare