We wandered out at 11 to do some shopping, and, observing the crowds, stayed. While I was in Sainsbury's R had found a spot on the barriers about 10 metres from the finish line - we were joined by our brother-in-law and nephew who'd come down from Glasgow for the day. That's not as daft as it seems - he works on the trains, so gets free travel.
The crowds were about 3 deep for the first pass through, then after a thinning for lunch gradually built up until by 3pm it was 7 seven deep around us - based on what was around us I'd guess on there having been about 5000 people on Guilford High Street.
We saw a few decent hill-climb sprint contests - one enterprising chap had entered to publicise his bamboo bike project based in Zambia, and it was good for the soul to see an over-40 up against a young whipper-snapper in the final. Sadly, the whipper-snapper won very easily.
The commentary team were having real problems with their TV feed, and were relying on i-phone pictures to tell us what was going on. Perhaps they should have posted someone in the club above us, where I gather Peta Todd, 25, from Newham, was holding a Cavette - I have a photo to post to find out if my informant was telling the truth.
And so the Manx Missile came hurtling up the hill. The highlights have suggested that Sky have been so dominant in the stage sprints that I suppose it's not surprising that he managed to take something with a nasty sting in its tail.
Bit by bit the other riders came through, and the field was so spread out that we were stuck on the wrong side of the road to get through for the presentations. But we wandered down through the bus and van park past the sparsly attended camps to the enormous crowd around the Sky bus. Bernie Eisel (I gather - I'm not strong on recognising faces) did a meet'n'greet before Cavendish, looking absolutely shattered, rolled through. After a brief spruce-up he emerged into the throng looking utterly lost, as if he really didn't know where he was, and frankly he'd rather be anywhere else thank you very much.
I'll post up some photos when I've taken a look at them. We've now come back to the flat for a sit-down - 6 hours on one's feet is more tiring than 6 hours on a bike, and tempting though it was to find a pub we're both dry at the moment.