Today the Tour de Yorkshire returned to the cobbles of Halifax and stage 4 of the race set off from the historic Piece Hall. In fairness, we didn’t get to see much of the riders themselves (not to the extent that I was able to see them in […]
Tick, tick, tickโฆ Basically thatโs what Iโve spent today doing. Ticking off all the things that you might, in an ideal world, want a disused railway line, converted into a walking-cycling greenway – voie verte here in France – to have. If the dรฉpartement of Seine-Maritime set out to build what I consider to be an unbeatable bit of cycle-touring infrastructure, they succeeded.
As a linguist and a cyclist, the language of cycling has always been of interest. If you know even a little French or Italian or Spanish – the main languages of the Grand Tours – it certainly helps when trying to understand what’s going on. Indeed such is the influence of these languages that the Tour de Yorkshire – my local race here in northern England, a legacy event following the visit of the Tour de France to the region in 2014 – not only includes the ‘de’ in its name but continues to refer to its more significant climbs using the French word ‘cรดte’ or ‘hill’ in honour of Le Tour itself. They can sound quite comical – the Cรดte de Goose Eye or the Cรดte de Otley Chevin for example – and it must drive the Brexit voters mad that their ‘pure’ English is being ‘corrupted’ by the French. But let’s face it, that all started way back in 1066 (and long may it continue).
May was once just another month albeit a nice month in spring with thoughts turning to the longer, warmer days of summer. Then in May 2015, two things happened. Hot on the heels of the visit of the Tour de France to Britain’s largest county in 2014, the […]
I was an Olympic Games Maker back in 2012 (can you believe it’s now nearly 7 years ago?!) and had a wonderful experience. The Olympics won’t be coming back to Britain anytime soon (and post-Brexit, you can’t blame them…), but every year the organisers of the Tour de […]
The host towns and cities for the 2019 edition of the Tour de Yorkshire were announced yesterday… …and two things should stand out. Firstly, that ‘Hors Catรฉgorie‘ classification (or, as Sir Gary managed to mangle it into, ‘whore’s category’ which is surely a ranking system used for a […]
I live near Halifax so I’m not complaining, but it’s curious that stage 4 of the 2019 Tour de Yorkshire will be almost identical to stage 4 in 2018. The only difference I can spot is that from Halifax the cyclists will head north out of Halifax in […]
Here’s the route of this year’s race combined with a few memories… Look out for more posts over the next few days on CyclingEurope.org from the heart of ‘Le Tour (…de Yorkshire)’!
