The day the Tour de France visited us

On Monday 7 July the spectacle that is the Tour de France swept through Essex, including our tiny village.

As it was coincidentally the day after Curly Girl’s 5th birthday we kept the gazebo and bunting up, fired up the BBQ and kept the celebrations going. It was a blisteringly hot afternoon and as you can see someone was excited about the arrival of some of the greatest cyclists in the world.

Seeing those bikes speed past our front door was the culmination of months of work for our village events committee and I’m so proud of what we all achieved.

We had one of the most challenging corners of the second stage of the race – a 90 degree left hand turn in front of the original Elizabethan School House, donated by Lord Riche in 1564 – which we envisioned would be a prime spot for people wanting to watch the race.

So with over 2,000 car parking spaces, 700 secure cycle spaces, a campsite, giant screen, stalls, bar, food and entertainment throughout the day the whole village came together to welcome thousands of visitors from across the county.

As the Tete de la Course approached cheers erupted from the spectators and it really brought a lump to my throat! (I know I’m soft like that.) I’m so proud of my hubbie for the fab photos he took as the riders sped past.

As press officer I ran the PR and social media side of things – something I could do easily from home – while others took on the event management, people organisation and preparations for the day including dressing up the village in what felt like miles of bunting.

It just goes to show what you can achieve when you pull together as a team.

Even the police got into the party spirit, beeping their horns and waving at the crowd!

You can see the gallery of photos from this very special day at our Tour de France website which was very kindly put together for us by Ben and Craig at Juice Creative who I would HIGHLY recommend. They were a pleasure to work with and speedy isn’t descriptive enough of how quickly they turned things around!

 

Linking up with#AllAboutYou over at Mama-and-More