As excitement builds and preparations proceed in Carrick-on-Suir for the Tour de France there are also local regrets about the price the event exacts. Following negotiations it was agreed the Tour would take in the town centre - on condition that what French officials regarded as obstacles were removed or modified.
These included an ancient jostle stone (meant to deflect the wheels of passing traffic) at the entrance to the West Gate, a narrow street under the 18th-century town clock, itself a local landmark in a tower dating back to the original walled town.
The clock and its 200-year-old bell is topped by a weather vane in the form of a salmon, emphasising Carrick's riverine identity.
This cluster of structures amounts to a significant and picturesque part of local heritage.
The jostle stone has witnessed all Carrick's history. It was also an Ordnance Survey benchmark.
The rough outcrop of limestone had come to symbolise an umbilical continuity with the town's passing story.
But pressure from French race officials succeeded and Carrick-on-Suir Urban District Council agreed to remove it in preparation for the race and afterwards restore it, perhaps placing it elsewhere.
Why world-class cyclists could not have dealt with this minor obstacle and cherished landmark remains a mystery to many.
Carrick residents, drunk and sober, have successfully negotiated it for centuries.
For this citizen its removal last Sunday felt like the agonised uprooting of an age-old wisdom tooth from the corpus of local heritage.
Had we been out-jostled by the French?
Jack Savage, the local butcher beside the corner of whose shop the stone stood, acknowledges its historical significance but feels it was a traffic hazard.
He thinks it could now be placed yards away, as the central feature of a decorative island in the adjacent Sean Kelly Square - named in honour of the town's cycling hero.
With the uprooted stone in the care of the local authority this is a suggestion worth considering.
Carrick has lined up an exciting and event-filled week built around the Tour's arrival on July 13th. The town residents are planning their personal vantage points for a day on which another page of the town's story will be written as incalculable crowds pour in from the rest of Co Tipperary.
The jostle stone at Carrick's West Gate will not witness this great day as it did those less benign events in the past.
In November 1649, hundreds died here when Confederate forces under Inchiquin, attempting to retake the town from the occupying Cromwellians, were bloodily repulsed.
"So sweet a mercy was the giving of this little place to us," wrote Cromwell from Carrick.
In this instance the French have won the day without firing a single shot.