Tour de France visits Medway, July 07
By Ben Morton, of Meopham:
It’s a rare sunny day in a summer of dank days interspersed with downpours. The grey walls and red tiles of the Medway towns gleam dully in the unaccustomed light. The tour normally goes through central and southern France – La France profonde – and you realise suddenly how extraordinarily hot it must be for them in those far away lands. The roads are sweating in the sun and the crash barriers are all along the dual carriageway.
The question of the day is will anyone turn up? Wimbledon is on TV, and the tedium of the British Grand Prix, with our new Lewis “Interesting” Hamilton, is strong alternative diversions. However the circus of the Tour has the advantage of novelty and newness, something normally alien to the English summer. We shall see.
Down at the end of Wyles Street in Gillingham a fantastic banner has been set-up THE MAD COWS OF MEDWAY WELCOME THE TOUR DE FRANCE. BONJOUR. A cunning reference to the French ban on English beef, following the BSE outbreak over the last few years. We wander down Pier Road towards the docks, Adam chatting to electors on the way (he was until recently the councillor for the area and old habits die hard). He is also selling the concept of a new community Park by the route of the Tour on the way.
Down by the new dual carriageway little is happening. Many police and barriers are in place, but there are only a few people by the large screen next to the underpass. They have had trouble trying to get pictures of the tour in London and are reduced to showing pop videos. One side of the road has been kept clear and no banners seem to be in place. We watch as the first parts of the tour caravan sweep by. It is disappointing, The floats are commercial and dull and given the need to travel ahead of the race keep at the steady 30 to 40 mph.
We wander back up to the Wyles Street junction, where people have made their own fun and a very decent group of jazz kids are doing versions of “Moondance”, and other standards in their front garden. It feels more like a carnival here, and the barriers have not reached this far, creating an intimacy and giving the spectators the essential hint of danger that is required for enjoyment.
As there are a few minutes to go, Adam takes me on a tour of the site of the Lower Lines Park. I was expecting scruffy woodlands, which is how it starts, full of broken bottles, but then brick walls and concrete bunkers begin to appear, followed by ditches, overgrown garden areas, and finally an immense brick Napoleonic firing line which has been sunk into vast ditches overlooking the Medway below us. This is as unexpected and hidden as a temple in the Mayan jungle, with Buddleia falling from the sides and butterflies of many unknown kinds floating in the summer sun.
Five minutes later we are back on the road, with motorbike photographers out catching pictures of the jazz band. Endless streams of support cars with bike racks full of ultra thin machines hoisted above them stream past, and every second policeman in France seems to be along for a jolly. We watch them roll past.
Finally a man appears, clothed from head to foot in luminous skin-tight plastic. He is David Miller, a Scots who by some miracle is leading, and we cheer him on. I should point out that the crowd’s knowledge of cycling, like my own is nonexistent. We only know who he is by contacting those watching the event sitting at home on TV, on our mobile phones. He is a lone figure, surrounded by car exhausts as he pounds up the hill. A single tour of France is reckoned to take a year off your life and watching him sweat you can see why.
A chasing group, soon to catch and eventually overhaul him before Canterbury is a few minutes behind and a couple of minutes later the peloton pulls past, wobbling impossibly close together, looking as if a puff of wind would bring them down like some mobile house of cards. These are followed by a few disconsolate stragglers, in danger of being swept up by the last van, the collector of those strays who have wandered too far from the pack.
A gaggle of colour and Lycra, furious concentration and pumped up adrenaline, testosterone, and God knows what else, a collection of mobile advertising hoardings masquerading as cars, and in 10 minutes it's all gone. With everyone else we pack up the deckchairs, take down the banners and wander back home for a cup of tea.
