Does anyone have any suggestions on where the best place to catch stage 5 would be. I'm thinking Daventry since it passes through there twice.
My recommendation would be the start or finish town.
Watching at the side of the road is exciting when the tension builds and the race traffic increases but when the race comes through it's almost impossible to recognise who is who 'cos they're SO quick, and once they've passed it feels like a bit of an anticlimax.
You can easily spend an hour or more milling around the start and see the riders close up, along with the cars loaded up with bikes on the roof (though access is more restricted than it used to be a few years ago). At the finish if you wait a couple of hundred metres past the finish line (hopefully where you can hear the commentary, and if very fortunate see a screen) the riders will come to a stop and greet their team and teammates right in front of you.
That's my family's method, honed over quite a few years in the UK, but we've yet to get to the TdF or the Giro which is our next project.
