The Tour de France in Yorkshire

There’s a song by Kate and Anna McGarrigle with the line: “I've walked upon the moors on many misguided tours where Emily, Anne and Charlotte poured their hearts out”.

Emily, Anne and Charlotte, of course, were the Bronte sisters who lived on the Yorkshire moors in the early nineteenth century in the grimy industrial town of Haworth. Thanks to the literary merits of the Bronte sisters, Haworth, with its stone cottages and cobbled streets, is today a picturesque tourist destination.

In July this year, however, Haworth will see a tour the likes of which the poor sisters could never have imagined. The town is expected to be jammed with people when a circus-like parade of promotional cars, trucks and media vehicles pass through, led by a platoon of police cars and motorcycles with lights flashing and sirens wailing. Meanwhile, helicopters will be circling overhead as the crowds lining narrow Mill Hey Road crane to see a kaleidoscopic mass of around two hundred cyclists swoop into town.

This is the Tour de France — in Yorkshire, England. It may surprise many to learn that it is occurring outside France, although not unusual for the world's largest annual sporting event. During the three weeks it is held each summer, the race covers approximately 3,500 kilometres over twenty-two stages, mainly in France, but it typically dips into other European countries.

Launching the tour in the north of England is seen as a huge coup for local organizers and an economic prize for both countries. It’s also partly the reason Yorkshire has been voted the third best region in the world to visit, according to Lonely Planet’s 2014 Best in Travel list. And for me personally, the prospect of these top cyclists travelling the roads and dales that I tackled as a skinny kid is the stuff of dreams.

The Tour de France claims a worldwide television audience with 47,000 hours of coverage. Add in another 12 million spectators along the route and it’s an advertising bonanza.

In 2012 the Tour was won for the first time by a British rider, Bradley Wiggins (now Sir Bradley). The following year saw his teammate Chris Froome take the title. This, with spectacular successes in cycling at the 2012 Olympics, resulted in an upsurge in cycling in Britain, not unnoticed by the organizers eager for a larger audience. In return for hosting two stages, Yorkshire will have complete disruption of traffic with roads closed for up to eight hours along the route; however, the county is expecting an economic windfall of as much as $180 million dropping into its tourism basket.

In addition to a weekend of thrilling sport, the Tour will showcase some of the most beautiful countryside in Britain, thanks largely to the dramatic helicopter coverage of the race.

From the Grand Depart of in the bustling city of Leeds, the first stage is a loop through the Yorkshire Dales (valleys), finishing in the graceful old spa town of Harrogate, a popular resort for the one percenters of the Victorian era. After an exhausting 200 kilometres, I dare say a health spa for the riders will be in order, plus a considerable number of the more than 5,000 calories each will have burnt through.

On leaving Leeds, the route follows the valley of Wharfedale to the market town of Skipton, a favourite
place of mine as it’s where my parents first met. The race passes along High Street, site of a lively market, and right past the Black Horse Inn where my mother once worked so long ago. Dad worked nearby on the Duke of Devonshire’s grouse hunting estate.

Much as they’d like, there’ll be no time for riders to pause at the inn to refuel on a pint of local ale and traditional roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. So focused, they’ll barely notice the canal basin on the Leeds to Liverpool canal, either, where a narrow-boat can be rented for a more leisurely trip through the dales. And the massive ramparts of the 900 year old Skipton Castle, one of the best preserved medieval castles in England, will be just a blur to them as they race by en route to the hills of the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

There are no alp-like mountains on the UK stages, but the rolling terrain of the dales throws up surprises with sharp, steep hills that daunt the casual cyclist. As the riders pass by, they may not notice the quaint villages set in a patchwork of green fields, stitched in place with dry-stone walls of white limestone. More likely they’ll be focused on strategy as a stage race is a chess game on wheels.

It’s a team event with an outright winner based on accumulated time, but there are competitions within the overall race, and among the nine members on each team there are specialists to challenge for the title of best sprinter, single stage winner, or the title of King of the Mountains.

If riders do have a moment to admire the magnificent views, they’ll be able to see the three highest mountains of Yorkshire: Whernside, Pen-y-ghent, and Ingleborough. Beneath these 700 meter peaks are natural caverns, the most famous being Gaping Ghyll. Big enough to hold a cathedral, it has a waterfall twice the height of Niagara Falls

Leaving Wharfedale, the tour crosses Kidtones Pass into Wensleydale, home of the classic Wensleydale Cheese, then follows the valley to the lively market town of Hawes. From here riders will tackle the formidable Buttertubs Pass, so called because of limestone formations near the summit. It will be the toughest ascent of the stage, a punishing five kilometres with a 20% grade. As they reach the top, they’ll see a landscape scoured to the bedrock in places by gales that rage in from the Atlantic. Pity the riders if it’s one of those days, but on a clear day the view is priceless.

After a hair-raising descent on a road little wider in places than a single car width, with cattle grids and ambling sheep, the route snakes down through beautiful Swaledale, hugging the river as it tumbles over Wain Wath Force with the sound of clogs on cobbles. The name “force”, a term used in the North of England, is derived from the Norse word for waterfall — yes, the Vikings were here, too, long ago.

Henry the VIII’s men were in the area as well in 1539, busy destroying the nearby Fountains Abbey after Henry ordered the dissolution of the monasteries. What they left behind is a glorious ruin, one of the largest, best preserved Cistercian monasteries and a World Heritage Site.

It’s a short detour but of no interest to the riders. There are now only about 30 of the 190 kilometres of the first stage left before the finish in Harrogate, and teams will be manoeuvring for position, setting up their best sprinters. Waiting crowds will be hoping for a win and the coveted yellow jersey for British rider, Mark Cavendish, a sprint specialist who’s already notched up twenty-five Tour de France stage victories. To streak to another win on home soil will mean every pub in town will be packed that night.

The gruelling 200 kilometre stage two begins the following day from the walled city of York. Founded by the Romans in 71 AD, tourism is now York’s business with deep layers of history to explore, especially the twelfth century York Minster cathedral that towers over the city. While across the river is the National Rail Museum with a vast collection ranging from the earliest steam engines to the Japanese Bullet train.

Maybe not as fast as a speeding bullet, but with an average speed as high as 50 kilometres an hour on the flat and 80 downhill, the riders will head back into the hills again before leaving the dales for the spectator rich conurbation of southwest Yorkshire, heart of the nineteenth century industrial revolution.  This is the area that gave rise to the Luddites, disgruntled hand weavers who resisted change by smashing the first mechanized looms. They couldn’t stop it, but resist the technological revolution of today and you might still be called a Luddite.

After passing through Haworth, the race enters the town of Huddersfield, significant as the home of Brian Robinson, a childhood hero of mine who, in 1958, became the first ever British rider to win a stage of the Tour de France. Still riding today at 84 years old, he’ll sure be smiling when he sees Le Tour arrive on his own doorstep.

From here the route turns up the Holme Valley, even more significant as it’s where I grew up, cycling forth on most of roads the tour has covered. When I left in 1967 the valley was home to numerous textile mills that after a century or so of belching smoke had turned every building black. Today, almost all those dark satanic mills are gone, torn down, or turned into condos. Soot stains have been blasted away from public buildings to reveal beautiful, golden sandstone, although the old weaver’s cottages that scramble up the valley’s hillsides are still dark, if fading.

Here, too, dry-stone walls quilt the fields, threading upward past man-made lakes and woodlands with green-barked trees to peter out before the bleak, yet starkly beautiful moors in the Peak District National Park. It’s here, when the heather is in bloom, where nostalgia tugs most hard on my sleeve. Nonetheless these moors can be a desolate place when clouds drape low; with only coarse grasses, heather, and peat bogs, there are few landmarks to guide a lost soul — just ask Jane Eyre.  

The valley below, however, is a welcoming place, attracting visitors in ever greater numbers since 1973 when filming began of the longest running TV sitcom in the world, Last of the Summer Wine. It transformed the town of Holmfirth when it became a destination for fans of the beloved show. The series ended in 2010 but visitors still arrive for the annual folk festival, brass bands, and the best fish and chips in England. Locals are friendly, and typically forthright with a sometimes impenetrable accent and a dark sense of humour — a barber shop, long gone now, was said to have had a parrot taught to screech the words, “Cut his bloody ear off, Fred.”

There may well be swearing in the peloton as it passes through. The seven kilometre valley begins as a gentle incline, but it grows steeper as it reaches Holme Moss, the peak at the head of the valley and the toughest climb of the stage. Seen from the valley it’s a forbidding wall, and an opportunity for the strongest climbers to break clear.

This is where I’ll be, the ideal vantage point to watch the arrival of the first riders as they explode up the climb, legs burning, lungs gasping as they pour their hearts out, as I did as a skinny kid so many years ago, dreaming of one day riding the Tour de France. I never did, but my daughter, Leigh, competed in Le Grande Boucle, considered the Women’s version of the Tour de France, before going on to represent Canada at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

After clearing Holme Moss, it’s a straight, fast descent down Woodhead Pass before a race to the finish in the city of Sheffield. One more stage will follow in southern England with a finish in London, before the whole circus packs up and leaves for 18 more stages in France, finally ending with a final sprint up the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

Yorkshire may never be the same.

First published Grand Magazine 2014