le Tour swings into action …

The Tour de France swung into action in London with a big bang on the 7th of July. As part of the volunteer staff for the event, I was placed up on Hyde Park Corner as the riders came out of Hyde Park heading towards the 1km banner and the finish line in the Mall. It was an amazing thing to see build up.

With the other volunteers, we arrived at about 10am and got ourselves sorted out at our position. It was too crowded at the time but we still had people asking us what was going on and how to get here there and everywhere. However, during this time we also saw some of the riders getting warmed up as they went around as well as the caravan that went around before the riders started the event.

The crowd however, did start to build up a lot around lunch time and it really started to get interesting as people were trying to go across into the park via a tunnel under the road as well as the tube station and of course those wanting to get out of the park. The tunnel wasn’t very big and it got a wee bit crowded in there.

It would have been handy if one of the paid staff had stayed to do his job rather than go for a cigarette which took all day for him to do. And I do mean that literally!! We saw him when we arrived and then never saw him again. The Police were reasonably helpful though so that was a good thing and got things sorted out for us and then left us to try and maintain some sort of order.

All in all it wasn’t too bad a day but I do hope the organizers get some lessons out of the event for future events such as making sure that the people they get to do things for them are informed about all the passes that they need to check, the staff they are paying to do the job stay in place for the day rather than run off somewhere and perhaps provide more access points to the event when it is actually in progress.