Tour de Yorkshire 2019

In 2014, the Tour de France started in Leeds and continued south through England before going into France. There was such a positive response in the North here that the Tour de Yorkshire was developed the very next year.

This year, the Tour de Yorkshire took place in the first weekend in May, and the route went right past the kids' school as well as our house. I don't know much about cycling, but I thought I would test out my good camera if I got a chance to see any of it.

The women's race came through in the morning, and once they closed our road I headed out to watch. And I waited, and waited. I knew they were getting close when I saw the helicopter, so I kept waiting.

If you look close you might see people watching from the windows

Then, about 600 police motorcycles went by, and finally I saw bicycles!

It went by pretty quickly, but it was cool to see.

Now, every car on our street was previously instructed to clear out the night before. Most people had listened, but there were still 2 cars that I could see before the women's race. They had race volunteers standing next to the cars with yellow flags to warn the cyclists.

Before the men's race, they had the cars towed, which is something I've not seen here before. Even when they were resurfacing our road last year, they just went around the cars that remained.

I was having a Mrs Kravitz moment

The men weren't due to arrive until well after I had collected the kids from school. Since I had moved my car, I walked to pick them up, and on the way home we saw several sponsor cars drive by.

Once we got home, the kids had snacks while we waited outside.

I had the timing all wrong, because we were way too early. After a while, the kids got tired of waiting and went inside to watch television. I made myself a drink and kept waiting. A crowd gathered down the street to watch as well.

There were a lot more men racing than women, but it was over just as fast.

This race was just a taste of what's to come in the fall. The UCI Road World Championships will be held in North Yorkshire, and will take up an entire week. So our area will be crowded, and parking will be severely limited. Not to mention road closures. It's just after school starts, so we will be walking to and from school each day. I have to admit that I'm not looking forward to that race as much because of the huge inconvenience. But we'll get through it, and I'll try to get more pictures.