how long does the Tour de France caravan take to pass by?

[SimonHughes]

Hello there. My name is Simon and I just signed up to this forum. I'm a keen mountain biker and follower of road bike racing. In particular, with the Tour starting in Britain this year, it's my first real chance to see it in the flesh, as it were. I plan to watch the race from some point on Stage 1, 8 July, somewhere in Kent.

I see that the official Tour website has just (as of 19 April) posted tour time schedules:

http://www.letour.fr/2007/TDF/presentation/us/horaires_0.html

My question is how long does the tour caravan tend to take to pass any point on the race. I can tell from the tour timings when the caravan is expected to pass any point on Stage 1 and I can see roughly when the riders are expected but I can't tell how long the gap between the end of the caravan and the riders will be (which I presume is "dead time" with nothing much going on). Can anybody help me out with this one? Thanks in advance.

(In case anyone's interested in why I ask, I intend to be doing a ramble with friends through the Kent hills on the day of the race, and the answer affects whether we'll stop for (a long!) picnic lunch while the caravan *and* race go by or whether we'll lunch for the caravan and then walk on to another point on the route to see the riders.)

[I saw Elvis]

Hi, TdF caravan takes about an hour to pass by, slightly more in the mountains, but that's in mainland Europe I suspect that it'll be a fair bit less in the UK as some of the trucks won't be coming over the channel as there's no point in getting us excited buy 2 for 1 offers at French supermarkets. Could be as little as 20 mins, but give it an hour to be safe.

Oh if you're UK based, checkout the forum on www.veloriders.co.uk :)