Le Grand Depart; day 3

We’re in Cambridge for the start of Stage 3 of the Tour de France.

A black leather glove is coming up the road towards me. A motorcycle policeman has his hand extended, making (friendly) contact with the crowd. I think - shall I? Why not? I shout ‘Woohoo’ as we touch.

The motorcycle police are followed by gigantic bottles of fruit juice, with no apparent means of motion. Or control. I find I’m laughing out loud. So are the people around me.

We squeal with delight as a Haribo lorry passes by, distributing sweeties to the crowd. We cheer a car which we assume has a former Tour hero inside but is in fact driven by someone from the Yorkshire Building Society. More and more household products and food stuffs fly past, accompanied at frequent intervals by mobile discos. Complete with dancing girls. Bringing up the rear, a convoy of oven chips. (No samples this time).

People who watch the TdF on television usually just see the peloton whizzing past at high speed. They assume ( I assume) that the experience for those on the ground must be over in seconds. Not so. What the armchair spectator rarely sees is the Publicity Caravan. This collection of floats has been an integral part of the race for the past 80 years. It starts off about 2 hours before the riders and takes about 45 minutes to pass. At the end of the 3-week race, it will have given away about 16 million goodies.

Not everyone approves of the Caravan. The writer Pierre Bost commented: "This caravan of 60 gaudy trucks singing across the countryside the virtues of an apéritif, a make of underpants or a dustbin is a shameful spectacle. It bellows, it plays ugly music, it's sad, it's ugly, it smells of vulgarity and money.”

I guess he didn’t get any Haribos then.

It’s been an amazing day; to be part of something so big and so good natured is quite unique in my experience