Tour de Yorkshire comes to Littleborough

Tour de Yorkshire comes to Littleborough

7 More Image(s) In Gallery

Following in the footsteps of the Tour de France, the Tour de Yorkshire made its way along Blackstone Edge this afternoon (Sunday 3 May).

Starting in Wakefield, riders travelled south to Barnsley before heading to Holmfirth where they picked up the Grand Départ route in reverse, racing to Ripponden before riding Cragg Vale – which in the Tour de France was the country’s longest continual climb and today became the longest continual descent.

A group of seven riders who had broken away from the race made their way to Cragg Vale at around 2:30pm before the rest of the racers followed around five minutes later.

Small crowds gathered along the route to watch the racers as they made their way along the route.

Karen Clewer, from Littleborough, said: “It was fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. I cycled up from Littleborough to watch it, as I haven’t seen anything like this before.

“I wanted to see my favourite cyclist Tommy Voeckler and Team Europcar. It would be great for the borough if the Tour could extend its route down to Hollingworth Lake.”

Keith Rimmer who made his way up to Blackstone Edge from Rochdale said: “It was very quiet but it was still a very good thing to be able to watch. It is nice to have these events come here. I watched the Tour de France as well and that was a good event.”

The Tour de Yorkshire will be an annual event and organisers hope it will grow year-on-year to be one of the biggest events in the cycling calendar and position Yorkshire at the heartland of cycling in Europe.

Today was the final day of the race with riders finishing in Leeds.