I've been a fan of the Tour de France since the days of Stephen Roche and Sean Kelly.
I kept watching through the years of Greg LeMond, 'Big Mig' Indurain and Lance Armstrong (Boo!), lulled by a month-long sporting soap opera that allowed me to see soothing, beautiful, foreign landscapes flowing across the screen.
And if that got a bit boring, why there was also a bit of cycling and tactical play as the teams battled it out for the yellow jersey.
The tour has a magic about it, drenched as it is in gallic charm, surviving as a unique slice of French culture on our screens.
Watching the tour on TV is to take a little holiday from rain-soaked Augusts and windy British beaches and be transported to Alp d'Huez or the Pyrenees, smell the Gitanes, taste the cheese, hear the Johnny Hallyday.
To me Le Tour is symbolic of all things cool about our neighbours over the channel.
One day I swore I would get to see it live.
The nineties and the noughties rolled past and the tour came to Kent and Sussex, but I was always out of the country or couldn't get the time off work...
But this week it came to my doorstep. I had to see it.
I studied the map and worked out where I could get to in my lunchbreak. I went to Great Waltham, and was stunned at the size of the crowd crushing in to view this sporting giant.
The atmosphere was expectant, but good-natured, from the Mexican waves from one end of the street to the other, to the police outriders who high-fived roadside onlookers as they rode past.
All eyes kept rolling toward the the road as it entered the village.
As the time nudged near 2pm, the expectation grew... then a hornet swarm of helicopters appeared in the sky.
More cars swept by, and then magically in the middle of the cars, were two cyclists in blue jerseys! A breakaway!
The peloton arrived and the whole street broke out into a scrabble of photograph-taking.
One uncaring punter blocked my view by waving a full size ipad in front of my eyes. Why not use a phone like everybody else!
In the flurry of a minute the riders had passed, then a long procession of team cars and ambulances stormed through, honking horns and drivers grinning out of windows.
Everyone cheered. And for five glorious minutes, it felt... gallic. It felt like France. I was on holiday.
The rolling fields and hills I watched the tour storm through since the mid-80s were suddenly the hills and fields of my home... in one stroke the whole county was really cool.
Once the main caravan was through, there came hundreds of amateur cyclists, taking the opportunity to ride on car-free roads from Cambridge to London.
This got me thinking - could we not just close this route one day a year to allow cyclists young and old to ride the route. What a draw that would be! The chance to get out, get exercise and enjoy the countryside in complete safety. Think about it, it would work.
I left Great Waltham with another tick on the life list - I had seen the Tour de France.
At the European elections earlier this year, there was a big swing to Ukip, but after watching the reaction to the tour, I think we're a little bit more European than we like to admit.
