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Video: When the Tour de France came to Yorkshire

Celebrating the weekend when Britain went bike-crazy

Are you pining for those glorious days of last weekend, when the sun shone, the whole country loved cycling and a Brit was still in with a chance of winning the Tour de France? Remember them with this rather lovely video from Welcome to Yorkshire.

The crowds were huge — sometimes too huge — but even while riders complained they’d like a bit more space please, they acknowledged that the reception Yorkshire put on for the Tour de France was like nothing they’d ever seen.

The scenery didn’t disappoint, either. The Dales may not be the Alps, but bathed in sunshine, they provided a fitting backdrop for two glorious days of racing.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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