interlopers

A funny story on the radio the other day about an elderly couple who somehow found themselves in the middle of the London 2012 Olympic torch relay brought to mind a, well, “incident” is probably the best way to describe it that happened many years ago when I and a number of my cycling club mates went to Kent to watch the rather grandly titled Rochester International Classic bike race.

This was back in the days when we were starved of top class bike racing in the UK and the promise of the World’s greatest bike riders competing in our country was too much to resist.

So the Saturday saw us driving to Canterbury in Kent where we naturally partook of the wonderful hospitality before moving on to Rochester on the Sunday morning.

Hungover and clearly incapable of walking any distance, we blagged our way down to what we thought was the official car parking area near the start of the race by claiming to be riders late for the start, and then meandered off to look at the trade stalls and chat to some of the real riders before returning to our car which we than planned to drive to various points around the course to see the racing.

When we got back however we found our car parked right slap bang in the middle of the race convoy.  We were surrounded by team cars festooned with spare bikes and wheels and riders chatting away with team managers and getting ready for the off.

We were getting some strange looks from everyone around us: riders, managers, ……………..security!!

But the strangest look came from one Chris Boardman who was sitting on the bonnet of our car being interviewed for live Eurosport TV as we sheepishly got in hoping that no one would notice us.

As the race pulled away we had no option other than to drive off with it, surrounded by the team cars that support the riders throughout the race.  It wasn’t until about a half hour later that we were able to navigate our way out of the race convoy.

Waving to spectators on the route who must have been thinking “who the hell are they waving back at us?” did make us chuckle though, and it’s a story that lives on in my old club’s folklore, not to be surpassed until later that year and our legendary trip to Ghent in Belgium.

But that’s for another time.