The Tour de France is no ordinary bike race. It’s the pinnacle of the professional road cycling season, the undisputed king of the Grand Tours and the most hotly anticipated race for cycling fans across the globe.
However, watching it on TV just doesn’t do the race the justice it deserves. To really watch the Tour, you need to be at the Tour, witnessing history being made right before your very eyes…
This year, the race will tackle the classic Pyrenees and Alps mountain ranges and also pass through the Vosges Mountains and Massif Central on its long voyage towards Paris. For 2020, there will be a similar menu of delights, but just which climbs the riders will tackle remains to be seen. With neither l’Alpe d’Huez nor Mont Ventoux featuring in 2019 there’s a good chance one or even both will make it into the 2020 route. Beyond that, let’s not speculate just yet. What we know for certain is that the greatest riders in the world will battle it out, as they do each year, for the most prestigious jersey in all cycling; the fabled maillot jaune.
Thomson is offering two types of trip to see the 2020 edition of Le Tour, cycling and spectating, and we are currently taking advance bookings for both. Here’s a little bit more about the two package types.
Watch from the roadside – spectating trips
For the best race viewing and most memorable VIP experiences, it doesn’t get any better than Thomson Bike Tours. As an Official Tour Operator to the Tour de France and one of only two operators awarded premium status, we can get you to places others can’t, like VIP access to stage starts and finish line tribunes, as well as our famous private race viewing hospitality marquees for live action of the most pivotal parts of the race.
Our VIP spectator trips are the perfect way to experience the Tour de France, providing an unparalleled mix of live race viewing, behind the scenes action in the team paddocks and exclusive VIP hospitality. We have a number of different spectator trips and experiences available, and we adjust them each year to reflect the key points in that year’s route. One thing that never changes is our ever-popular Paris hospitality experience where you’ll watch the Tour come to a dramatic conclusion from the comfort of one of our official grandstands on the Champs-Élysées.
You can check out our 2019 Pyrenees spectator experience for a flavour of how we organise our mountain spectator trips.
All of our spectator experiences give you team paddock access so it’s your best chance to meet and chat with your heroes, watch the mechanics in action and capture memorable photos of the inner workings of this greatest of races.
Make your 2020 Advance Reservation here
In the tyre tracks of heroes – cycling trips
What could possibly be better than watching the Tour de France live on the roadside, feeling the whoosh of a speeding peloton on your face as they fly by? Riding in the tyre tracks of that peloton, of course.
Our KOM Challenges allow you to do just that. Not only will you get the chance to watch the race live from several of our VIP marquees, you’ll also get the opportunity to ride the same legendary routes and climbs as the pros. All of our KOM challenges are fully-supported and, once again, vary based on where the organisers take the race. For 2019 we have a Pyrenees challenge that includes the lung-busting climbs of the Tourmalet, Aspin and Peyresourde, an Alps challenge that will have participants clambering up climbs like the Galibier and Croix de Fer, and the Alps and Paris challenge that rolls all the fun of climbing Alpine passes and sprinting on the Champs-Élysées into one incredible package.
All our KOM Challenges in 2020 will offer Sport, Performance and Extreme ride programmes, giving you the option to choose which route you ride each day and how fast you’re going to tackle it. On each ride you’ll be followed by a dedicated support team, just like the pros.
As with our spectator trips, you’ll also receive VIP access to all the behind the scenes action at the race. You’ll also be given access to our private hospitality marquees, each one strategically placed on key climbs to ensure you witness the race-winning attacks as they happen.
Find out more about our climbing trips for the 2020 Tour de France
Make sure you follow these links to our KOM Challenges page and VIP spectator trips page to learn more, including dates, pricing and other essentials.
#thomsoninyellow
Why not follow our adventures in this years Tour on our Blog, Instagram and Facebook. Get an insight into just what our guests experience and the memories we create, whether riding or spectating. If you join in with our #thomsoninyellow hashtag you can even win yourself a trip to join us on the 2020 trip. Share your best yellow cycling images with the hashtag #thomsoninyellow, tagging Thomson to play along. The best ones will be reshared on the Thomson account and overall winners drawn at the end of the Tour. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook and sign up to our newsletter for full details.
Jacinta. To the right of the Lion
