Regular readers will know I am a huge fan of the Tour, so for the last few days I have been glued to the TV, watching highlights and where possible, live stages through the magic of the Sky Red Button. Wonderful. This year, the Tour organisers have not given us a vintage programme, with a lot of the second week being less eventful stages - I'd have preferred a mix of mountain and sprint stages through the programme, rather than the heavy emphasis on the mountains in the last week.

However, the rest of the race has amply compensated for this in terms of drama and events. Sadly, a spectator was killed yesterday in an accident with a police bike (seems the French police are as dangerous on the roads as the British ones). But this apart, we've had riders being shot on the route, riders punching spectators, mechanics punching cameramen, amazing falls and crashes, with awesome remounts to the end of the stage, intra-team rivalries, name calling about the Green Jersey, George Hincapie narrowly losing out on a stage win with an vicious argument over who was to blame (mostly his own team) and of course the return of Lance Armstrong. No drug scandals yet but Lance has been tested forty (yes, forty!) times in the past two months, with three tests in a 48 hr period at the first week of the Tour. All of this has been taking place against the background of the finest scenery in Europe with everything from rural scenes of sunflower fields down to the white horses of the Carmague and the mountains of the Alps.

British riders have been playing a large part in the dramas and excitement with Mark Cavendish doing brilliantly in the sprints and Bradley Wiggins in the top 5 of the GC. Other British riders are prominent support riders (domestiques) such as David Millar and Charlie Wegelius. We are now in the final week with a number of very tough mountain stages and a time trial with hardly any time separating the top riders. I will continue to be glued to it, so don't expect any but the most cursory blog posts this week. Normal life will resume next week.

Generally, I loathe most televised sports particularly football - finding it boorish, blokey, boring and banal. The Tour is my exception to this - I am completely addicted to every second of it. One thing I would like to consider is visiting a stage- this is perfectly feasible in future years. It seems likely that we will be going away for our first non-dog accompanied holiday in the winter - if that goes well, we could well consider a trip over to the Tour next summer. Spare a thought for Andrew in all this. Even when we walk the dogs in the morning, I tend to wander along burbling happily about green jerseys, team tactics and Contador's climbs. He is admirably patient, probably thinking that at least he only has to put up with this for three weeks a year - compared to the length of the football season, it's a cinch. As I write, he is enjoying a gin in the bath, after doing a lot of gardening today between showers. Lots of frogs out there which si good.

We went to the Farm shop yesterday morning on our way back from our walk, so got some lovely aged steaks for dinner last night (they were excellent) and a pork loin joint for tonight.