Not Soylent Green.

Planning a drive out to see a bit of Stage 1 of the Tour de France was the easy part.

I did not want to get stuck in a lot of traffic heading for the big hills and most picturesque sections through the beautiful countryside of Yorkshire. Those locations would be fantastic to experience the greatest endurance event in the world and many tens of thousands would not settle for anything less. In fact those seeking to stand on an uneven slope for a few hours had been best advised to get there a couple of days earlier because of the necessary closure of roads. This would mean camping out or resorting to two wheels and cycling from the nearest place that you could leave your vehicle safely without it being clamped, ticketed, towed away or subjected to a controlled explosion.

Based on this criteria the only place on the map was an elbow shaped junction on the Ripon to Harrogate trunk road known as Wormald Green.

I am sure that I have never been past or through that particular spot but there was a bit of a deja-vu sensation in my mind. A quick reccy on Google Earth did not throw up any familiar sights and so I put that spooky feeling down to a vague memory of a character in a novel by Graham Greene that I had speed read some thirty odd years ago.

The shallow junction may have been a busy intersection at one time. There was the distinctive canopy of petrol station although the grainy images, perhaps three years old, showed no signs of activity. A few rooftops were visible amongst thickly wooded surroundings and at the bottom of a gradual hill there was a pub and an empty car park. A sleepy hamlet, or not even as sizeable as that. More like a loose arrangement of buildings that just happened to have grown up unannounced and inconspicuous.

The drive, thanks to the RAC route planner, was a reasonable 80 miles from home and using the M62 and A1 would ensure a shortish travelling time and the essential avoidance of congestion and those dithering and hesitant motorists unclear of what roads were closed, open or restricted to them.

The fast roads made up all but the last 6 miles which were cross-country through a few, no doubt, quaint commuter settlements.

On leaving the A1 at Boroughbridge there was only one other car ahead which seemed to have Wormald Green as a destination. This was because of the driver pre-empting my own decisions in terms of signalling and turning. The vehicle had only two occupants so what with my wife, son and myself there would be only a handful of spectators on the verge side. I could cope with that. We might even strike up a conversation on the likely outcome of the days racing. That could make for a pleasant afternoon of waiting for the race convoy and peleton of riders to come through on the 7 mile run in to the finish in Harrogate.

There were indications that others had pursued the same idea as mine.

The neighbouring village to Wormald Green was packed full of parked cars. The reason for the mass of vehicles could have been a large family wedding, a well attended church fete or some other summer event. A good number did have the skeletal forms of empty bike roof racks, in fact more of them than you would attribute to the average. There were also a lot of people on foot working their way along the narrow pavements and spilling out onto the roadway. They were kitted out with folding chairs, cool-boxes and packs of beer. Something was definitely going on. We drove on slowly reaching the last of the houses and decided to pull onto the verge and abandon the car. It was a case of just joining the herd and hoping that they knew where they were going.

The walk was about a mile. I began to recognise the approaching hedgerows and roof profiles from the satellite images and there ahead loomed the distinctive and strangely industrial shape of the filling station roof.

It seems that I had been party to a what I think is called a morphic experience. This is where one thought becomes subconsciously adopted by others and therefore seems the normal thing to do in any one circumstance. The same thing happened in Spielbergs "Close Encounters" drawing complete strangers to the Devils Tower .

Wormald Green was heaving with people so much so that they were hanging over the barriers on the bend of the road and occupied almost all of the banked verge for the full stretch of the downward slope. There were crowds as far as the eye could see. We battled for a vantage point. The same scenes were the case along just about all of the near 200km of Stage 1 in Yorkshire. It was a tremendous show of support and appreciation for the Tour de France. I was more than happy to share it with a few other people after all.