We had noticed signs saying that all driving was closed to vehicles on the Col du Glandon pass starting at 10am. So we headed out from our campsite by the Col de la Croix de Fer around 8am. It took us a while to drive down the hill because just about every place that someone could park a campervan or pitch a tent, someone had. Or there were more campervans driving to the remaining spots. Initially I had thought that parking would be full everywhere in town, but the lot by the grocery store wasn't very full at all, so we parked there.
We got breakfast, got some ice for our remaining food, got our bikes ready and headed out. We biked along the course without a problem until we got to the Lacets du Montvernier which had been closed down to everyone by the police. You couldn't hike up there at all, let alone bike up it. I was frustrated and a bit disappointed, but decided like a lot of other bikers that instead we would bike another route to get somewhat close to the top in hopes of finding a better spot. That took another 45 minutes or so of riding. We got to the part just after the switchbacks and again it was closed from the top. Police were even making spectators leave every spot except for just beside this church up top. So we settled in along the road just above. This was at around 12:30pm that we got there.
We then waited a lot. We had lunch. We went to the bushes to find a bathroom which happened to have a great view of the switchbacks. We made friends with a French guy from Marseille who was giving us updates on who was in a breakaway, etc. He also told us that the caravan was not going to pass by because the turns on the switchbacks were too tight for them. I also talked to another group of enthusiastic Polish fans who were nearby. They were a bunch of fun and gave me a Polish beer to drink.
Somewhere around 2:30pm a whole bunch of riders started riding past us. A lot of them had jerseys saying "2015 Pro Am Tour de France". It seemed like a lot of them got to ride up the switchbacks with an escort or something. That made me feel pretty jealous and then mad for not being in that elite class. Whatever. Every once in a while some official looking cars with very important people came whizzing by from up the switchbacks.
Finally, at around 5pm, 4 helicopters started whirring and circling above us. We waved at them in hopes of getting on TV. The choppers were circling for a while and then finally we saw some official red cars like you see on TV come by. Then we saw the first rider: Romain Bardet who was in a solo breakaway. He was followed by his AG2R team car. After that there were a bunch of other small groups.
A final group came by maybe as much as 45 minutes after the first rider. I caught a glimpse of Peter Sagan who was having a conversation with the other riders in that group. They were followed by a bunch of medic cars and a flatbed towtruck.
After that, I thought it might be cool to try to go down into town to try to find some riders after they had finished. We got on our bikes and started out towards town. All of us bikers were stopped in a small village by police until they let us all go down. Laurel had mentioned that there was some trouble with the brakes on her bike. They definitely weren't swiss stop brakes as you had to apply an excessive amount of force to get the wheel to stop from turning. I can't imagine what it would've been like going down a hill. I whizzed down to the next village without a problem and waited for Laurel. She came much later walking her bike down in tears about it all. We still agreed to go try and see the riders as it didn't involve any more descending.
We got into town and it was a massive traffic jam to get into town surprisingly enough. We made it to the finish area and very briefly caught a glimpse of Chris Froome in his Yellow Jersey getting into a team car to head off to a hotel. All of the team buses had left already and an army of workers was disassembling the poduim, finish, barricades, basically everything that looked like it was there just for the race. We walked around a bit more, but then quickly got back on our bikes and biked the 15km or so back to our van. We drove our van back up the Col du Glandon and Col de la Croix de Fer and had to frequently slow down or stop entirely for climbing cyclists, massive RVs negotiating switchbacks, etc. We eventually got back to our campground at 9pm.
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