Tour de France 2014: Yorkshire Grand Départ Diary Pt. 1

As I mentioned last week, I'm lucky enough to have a good buddy who cycles and whose mum lives within spitting distance of Stage 1 of the Tour de France Grand Départ up in Yorkshire. The whole thing was so on-a-plate for us that we just had to do it, and as it eventually turned out we managed to spin the trip out to six days. Six days of thinking about nothing but bikes, bikes, beer, food and bikes. Bliss.

George and I met at Kings Cross early on Wednesday, grabbed a quick coffee & croissant and headed off to find our train. Ours were the only two bikes in the guard's van, despite warnings of overcrowding, and just over 2 hours later we arrived in Leeds. There was time to sink a quick half before catching our connection to Settle, a chocolate-box pretty market town in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, and our HQ for the week.

Staring at the rolling green hills and country lanes from the train I was itching to get the pedals turning, so not long after we arrived we suited up and headed out, and up. Rolling out of the town we quickly discovered that the hills in this part of the world are bigger, longer and steeper than anything we'd come across on a road bike before, and you can't go far without running into one. Before we left I'd managed to source a freewheel for the 1982 Raleigh Rapide I was riding, with a range of 13-26, and this combined with the 52/42 up front meant that gearing was a talking point with other riders we'd meet later in the week, who were often on modern compact chain rings with up to 34T rear cassettes.

The ride that afternoon turned into a nice 40k loop skirting Malham Tarn, with a fair bit of climbing and more than our fair share of glorious empty tarmac and stunning views.

The plan for Day 2 was simple: reccy the route of Saturday's stage. It turned into the biggest ride of the week, ending with 100k on the odometer and 1500m of the toughest climbing we'd find. We first headed east, over the 'Tops' - a colloquial name for the open moorland on the top of ridges between valleys - taking in the classic climb of Langcliffe Scar.

The descent to Halton Gill was equally wonderful, and we were even clapped by a group of schoolchildren on a field trip, practicing their spectating skills for the coming weekend.

The road from there down to Kettlewell was an undulating, very slight descent and was a total blast. A quick cafe stop in the village was in order, and we bumped into a few fellow cyclists who were taking in the yellow bunting and the bacon rolls. A bit of George's local knowledge revealed a little climb about 10k further up the road at Cray, and when we arrived it looked like a likely spot for viewing the race, though neither of us fancied ascending just to come straight back down so we turned in the general direction of home, and unwittingly towards the nastiest climb of the trip; Fleet Moss.

Ascending over 300m in 5.5k with some incredibly steep ramps and tricky hairpins was just too much for my Raleigh, and my legs, and it was the only time all week I had to stop and take a breather half way up a climb. Thankfully the descent down into Hawes more than made up for the pain, and feeling jubilant, we picked up a bar of Kendal Mint Cake and turned straight towards Ribblehead, on the road that would eventually loop us back round to Settle.

The landscape in this part of the Dale is really, really stark and our jubilation quickly dissipated in the 25kph headwinds and constant 4% uphill gradient. Our dispositions turned as bleak as the scenery. We definitely hit the low point of the trip on this road, and by the time we made it to the safety of a little hiker's cafe, thankfully stocking Clif bars, the atmosphere between us was pretty frosty. Somehow this ride had turned out much tougher than we'd anticipated, and we had no one to take it out on apart from each other. It was a long time before we summoned up the motivation for the final 10k roll home...