Post by dracco on May 2, 2016 11:13:30 GMT
I went to watch the Tour de Yorkshire on Saturday - my 20 seconds of watching the race flash past me was probably about 19 seconds more than people sitting at home got to see on the TV.
Here's the peloton tackling the first climb - the "cote de Harewood". (Truth to tell, this is a fairly even gradient that's not too difficult to get up: these guys were past in a flash). I'm near the top of the hill, about halfway through the 1km KoM section. (The road takes a big right-hander just after this point and continues upward at a slightly gentler pitch through Harewood village).
A great atmosphere in the crowd, the police motorcycle outriders played little tunelets with their sirens and a trumpeter among the spectators kept us entertained with a jazzed-up version of the Marseillaise (should have been Ilkley Moor baht 'at, really). It turned out that I'd stopped right next to the only other person watching who had a vintage steel bike (his was a Raleigh Record in British Racing Green), so we chatted about restorations and disparaged all the carbon fibre ("cheap plastic jobs") around us.
Looks a nice sunny day, doesn't it! It wasn't too warm, though, and I got caught in a freezing hailstorm on my way home. Fortunately, being used to Yorkshire weather I was well waterproofed (although hailstones can very easily penetrate the ventilation in a helmet, which isn't a lot of fun, and at one point I leaned a bit too far forward and got a bucketful of them down the back of my neck).