On Tour: Tour de France 2014

Seeing the Tour de France in person was on my project list for a long time. To watch it with my family from the house where I was born and bred in Haworth, Yorkshire, was an event to be treasured forever.

To mark ten years since the Tour de France Grand Depart occupied Yorkshire for two days in July 2014, I have released On Tour, the second of my Ramifications series of short, limited-edition books about culture and nature. It’s available through Betula Books. Here is an excerpt from the opening pages:

As soon as details of the 2014 Tour de France (TdF) route were announced, I was busy making plans to secure a front-row seat in the front garden of the house where I was born and bred in the village of Haworth. Yorkshire had been given the honour of staging the Grand Depart and reciprocated with splendid hospitality and a passion for cycling that lifted one of the world’s most prestigious sporting events by a gear or three.

Tour de France, Stage 2. The peloton on West Lane, Haworth, Yorkshire. July 6, 2014. © J. Ashley Nixon

An estimated 2.5 million Tykes, visitors, and fans turned out on the city streets, village lanes, and moorland hills to wait hours for a few seconds’ glimpse as the peloton sped by. Their preparations were impressive: yellow spray-painted old bikes all over the place, fancy dress costumes, funny placards in French mixed with local Yorkshire dialect, and even celebratory special brews from several renowned Yorkshire beer makers.

Bikes and beers. Stanbury and The Grouse, Oldfield, Yorkshire. © J. Ashley Nixon

The opening day began at Leeds Town Hall on The Headrow, heading east for a leisurely turn of the wheels around Harewood House, then up into Wharfedale and Wensleydale, over the Buttertubs Pass, ending in Harrogate, the hometown of Mark Cavendish’s mother. She awaited her star-sprinting son from the Isle of Man at the finish line near Bettys Teashop. Like us and most others in the massive crowd, many of whom had piled into trains to get from the start in Leeds, she was deeply disappointed when the Omega Pharma-Quick Step rider crashed going up Parliament Street, 300m from the end. The German sprinter Marcel Kittel (Giant-Shimano) took the opening stage and the first yellow TdF jersey ever awarded to a cyclist riding through Yorkshire.

Sunday’s Stage 2 sent the peloton up moor hills and down Dales as they made their way from York to Sheffield, ending with a win for Vicenzo Nibali, team Astana. The Italian champion won the overall general classification by over seven minutes after 21 stages and 3,660 km (2,275 mi) of cycling.

Vincenzo Nibali, winner of the 2014 Tour de France approaches Saint Mamet during Stage 17 in the Pyrenees, France, July 23, 2014. © J. Ashley Nixon

The tour organizers made an excellent choice to come north of London for the first time in the TdF’s 101-year history. By early morning, the local roads were closed to traffic, making it impossible for my friends Dave and Nancy Thomas in Ilkley and my sister Sally and family in Leeds to get across to join us in Haworth.

The route was a thing of beauty, the highlight being, for me, the ride up Main Street where Brontë literary types were outnumbered, at least for the day, by sporting types. I was reminded of my childhood; a seven-year-old sat outside my Mum and Dad’s newspaper shop, watching and listening to the whirling wheels and changing gears of the British Milk Race riders as they sped up the cobbles. The 2014 TdF took the riders up to the Top of Haworth, down past Changegate Fish and Chip shop, up North Street to the Baptist Chapel, then around The Sun pub corner on West Lane to where we were waiting with my Mum and Dad outside their house and my home for more than twenty years. William, Jennifer and Maricarmen were in the garden. I was perched on top of the wall with my cameras. In moments, the peloton had moved on to the Pennine Moors, the setting for Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. The following day, we headed south to London for Stage 3, then continued our tour into France and Spain to see some of the mountain stages in the Pyrenees and to Paris for the final stage.

Ay Allez Up! Vive Le Tour de Yorkshire!

See the book On Tour

You can see more of On Tour through this link to Betula Books.