A Summer Ritual

On the first weekend in July we start a three-week summer ritual that lasts for three weeks. We first started this ritual some twenty years ago. We follow the Tour de France through the hour-long highlights programme that is shown every night on UK television.

I do not know why we first started; it was probably because we were interested in the scenery. Even then we had travelled to France a lot so could regal the television with shouts of “we’ve been there”. Back in those days we were fairly ignorant of the finer details of the sport. We certainly did not know our peleton from laterne rouge. Gradually through the very informed commentaries on first Channel 4 and now ITV 4 we gained in knowledge.

I look back on those first years of watching realising now as to how naive we were. This was of course the era of mass drug taking cumulating in the exposure of Lance Armstrong. Almost right to the end Marion could not reconcile a cancer survivor taking performance-enhancing drugs. We wanted to believe that Marco Pantani was a special talent. Alas the sport always disappointed us.

However we persisted and probably now enjoy it more than ever, perhaps it is because of the increase British involvement. Little did we think all those years ago that we would see not one but two British winners of the Tour. Also we are always trying to spot our daughter and her husband as they watch the tour in northern Europe, unfortunately comments like we are on Section 2 of the cobbles are simply too vague for coverage motoring along at in excess of 40 kilometres per hour. We never spot them, perhaps they should wear distinctive costumes.

Lastly there was the privilege of watching and supporting the Tour live when it came to Yorkshire in 2014. This was great on so many levels, on the macro scale for the benefits that it brought to the local economy. On a personal note for the great day out we had in a field in the Yorkshire Dales waiting for the Tour to pass.

So for the next few weeks our evenings take on a ritualistic air, around 8pm we always watch our recording of the day’s highlights. But to do that successfully we have to avoid knowing the day’s result. So that means no looking at news websites after 2pm, or tuning into rolling news programmes. Sometimes we just make a mistake, you know the day is just not the same.