Tour de France: Pau-Paris- a good location to watch?

Hello,

Can you recommend a good location where I can watch the Tour between Pau and Paris?
I arrive in France on Wed 25 / Thurs 26 July and will be there until July 30th.

As I sit here in Melbourne it is difficult to find out how to watch a stage of the Tour.
Will I be sucessful if turn up the day before? Will it be possible to see anything at all in these days, or are there too many people?!

I imagine many viewing spots will be taken day/s in advance by spectators.

Accomodation: Is there any relevant infomation I should know regarding the location you recommend?? Happy to camp if need be.

I only have a short holiday - Any help you can provide to make it great is much appreciated.

Thanks- Alex

I don't know, the days you are there, there are no mountainstages, and on the flat stages, the field will pass you in 6-7 seconds. So I would say, try to find a small hill somewhere in a village, with a good atmosphere. When I look at the stages on: letour.fr I see that most of the smaller hills, are in the early km's on these stages, so I don't think there will be a lot of action. You could see the time-trail, then you will see all the cyclists one-by-one, but it will give you something to watch. As the race covers a lot of miles, there is always enough room to find a spot, it's only on the uphill finishes, that it is really crowded in the last few km's.

In Paris they are passing a couple if time on the Champ-Elysee, but it is going really fast, (the bit uphill towards the Arc d' Triomphe, is a little bit slower) and it will be really busy. But you can see the celebrations at the end.

firstly check out the website that HerrB has posted above. Sadly its not so good as recent years when it had estimated timings as to each town en route. Best advice is to select a stage, and drive out into it EARLY on the day in question. They close off the roads 2 to 3 hours in advance of the race so beware of getting closed out. You have to get your spot early, preferably a long uphill straight and then just pull of the road and set up camp for several hours. This is how we did it in 02 when Junkie Millar won the stage into Beziers, we were lucky that we had a field of view of 3 to 400 metres which the field covered in what seemed like seconds. Take a good picnic with you!
Best advice is also NOT to try and take photos of the field as they will pass you by SO quickly that you will miss the moment which is really just a blur of colours flashing by. But what an experience to say that you have seen it mate!

There is no problem at all finding a good viewing point in the non mountain stages. As stated above, it is best to be near the top of a hill or grade with a good view of as much of a stretch of road as possible.

Don't forget to bring an ice chest with refreshments.