le Tour is nearly over - and Andy is doing all right!

Phew, what an exciting few days in the Alpes: Andy hasn't done anything spectacular, but he's been "there or thereabouts", as they say, every day.

LLB and I have just caught up with Friday and Saturday's footage, and I've been pleased to see a few Lux Ensign flags out there again, as they have been sadly missing in the earlier part of the race - but I've been waving my miniature one like a mad thing, to show support.

Incidentally, as an aside, I was quite disgusted to see a youngish woman spectator at the road side along one of the final hills, wearing cycling kit so she was clearly a cycle fan,  failing to applaud as the leader sweated up past her.

Call yourself a cycling fan, woman? How can you not applaud the leader? Even if they are not a particular favourite of yours,  I do think that whoever is brave and strong enough to get out at the front up a huge hill, well, they deserve to be cheered on.  At the Tour of Britain, LLB and I applauded everyone from the first, to the last, so there!

End of aside...

So, back to Andy: he's still in the top 20, at 42mins down, but still top 20, which is pretty damned impressive for someone that is not yet back on form, don't you think? If he hangs on to that for the final day, he will get some UCI points at the end of the race, and therefore more value for next year - talking of which, there was a report from Andy confirming that he is going to the new Trek team ("there will be new jerseys" he said - ooh! ooh! we can speculate about new kit!) and although he didn't mention Frankie, he has said many times in the past that they will only race on the same team.

Fingers crossed that it all works out.

Jensie had a great day yesterday as well, being the lone break leader for so many miles, up so many hills, so well done Jensie, and let's hope that he doesn't retire next year, but sticks around for another year or more - he has said that he won't do another Tour, but with luck he won't retire.

Jakob has also done all right - he's been hanging around close to Frome on every climb (as Andy has been doing, good plan) and is currently sitting at 7th in the GC, which is fabulous, well done Jakob!

Now we only have to wait another 25mins or so for the start of the final day - it's going to be a bit odd, watching a stage at night, as they only other night race I have seen was the TTT prologue at la Vuelta the other year, when it was jolly hot, and they were probably all grateful for a bit of cool night air.

Not sure if it's going to be quite so cool and nice tonight - here in the UK we are being threatened with thunderstorms and lightning, as our heatwave is almost over. The last two days, we've had cloud! Cloud! Grey skies! And nowhere near as hot, despite the news people telling us that it's going to "peak" tomorrow. I assume by that, that they mean peak in temperature, which seems a bit unlikely as it's perceptibly cooler than it's been.

However, this might not necessarily apply to France.... we shall see...in about 15 mins!