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After experiencing Planet Tour in Leeds on Thursday, I decided to travel the seventy or so miles up to Harrogate to experience my first ever Tour de France finish.
Driving into Harrogate and the surrounding area, it was immediately apparent that Yorkshire was well aware a bike race was coming. The houses had more bunting than Christmas lights in December, and I must have counted nearly fifty yellow bicycles.
Walking towards the town centre, we found the two kilometres to go banner. “The finish must be this way” I said to my friend, pointing confidently. After walking a kilometre in the wrong direction, we did eventually find the finishing stretch.
We got to the town centre, and Planet Tour had descended upon Harrogate. We pushed through to as close to the finish as we dare go, and took up our spot for the day, 25 metres from the finish.
We worked out by watching a big screen, and by the average speed times provided in the spectator guide, that we had around five hours to wait. It didn’t matter, the Tour de France was coming!
The five hours passed slowly as we watched Jens Voigt’s admirable attack and then demise off the front of the bunch on the screen, and the atmosphere gradually picked up as the riders neared the town, especially upon sighting Mark Cavendish near the front of the peloton.
The pain in my feet and legs subsided as we pushed as close to the barriers as possible, as they entered the town. The cheers from further down the town echoed as we watched the screen in anticipation of a sprint finish, one that the entire town was united in hoping Mark Cavendish could take his twenty sixth stage win on the Grand Boucle.
We heard the race before we could see it, and we craned our necks to get our first glance of the spectacle. Cavendish was near the front – but wait, something was not right.
Marcel Kittel flew past at the head of the peloton, but where was Cav? There’d been a crash, and a quick glance at the screen confirmed the entire of Harrogate’s worst fear, Cavendish had gone down.
Rather than admiring the replay of a strong sprint from the impressive Marcel Kittel, we waited for Cavendish to get on his bike, but it wasn’t looking good, he was displaying the classic symptoms of a broken collarbone.
Ironically, Cavendish got a much better reception for finishing the stage on his bike than Kittel got for winning the race, perhaps a symptom of the fact we were in a very patriotic crowd.
Despite the result, which put a few glum expressions on the faces of the people of Harrogate, the atmosphere was even better than the team presentation. Yorkshire, and Harrogate in particular, really embraced the Tour, with children as young as three and four being joined in the crowd by men and women over seventy.
A Cavendish crash couldn’t ruin the atmosphere, and the wait of five hours was forgotten when the best bike riders (apart from a couple of notable exceptions) soared past us in a bid to become the first maillot jaune of the 2014 Tour.
Yorkshire is putting on a fantastic show, and it’s gone one more day to show the world why Yorkshire can put on the grandest of grand departs.
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