Tour of Britain!

This year's Tour of Britain bicycle race began in Edinburgh! Stan and I have long been fans of the Tour de France, although we've never seen it in person. So this was an absolute treat to see the Tour of Britain!
     I have to share it with you backwards as we experienced it for it to make sense. But these guys are fast, so we had to choose at which point we wanted to see them - which was a little further along in the race. It began up on the Royal Mile at the grandstand in front of St. Giles Cathedral.The course was marked with bollards, flags, and gates all along the Royal Mile.
Not a bad place to start a race.Stan and I set ourselves up at the bottom of Johnston's Terrace. This is a road that winds around the castle fairly steeply, so Stan knew we'd get to see a length of the peleton moving at a pretty high speed. Boy was he right, and what a view! (Yes, that's the castle.) I was able to stand on a bollard to get these shots for your.
This was looking the other direction as they wound around the corner to Lady Lawson Street - the same street I took to walk to Uni almost every day through my MFA. They went around the course twice for the opening, so I got these pictures during one lap and this video during the next lap. (Click the image to watch on YouTube.) My only conundrum was on what to yell. For the Tour de France, you yell "Allez! Allez! Allez!" For this one... "Ah, gae on ya, then?" HA! I don't know. At any rate, it was a lovely way to start a Sunday morning in Edinburgh!