L’Etape UK, the official Tour de France sportive, will be moving to Buckinghamshire this year with a testing course in the Chiltern Hills – and in keeping with the French spirit, will be taking place on Bastille Day, Sunday 14 July.
The event will start and finish at Penn House, Amersham, where there will be a Tour de France fan park providing family-friendly entertainment throughout the day, including a French food market and live coverage of Stage 9 of the race itself.
Some 3,000 places are available for the event, which is organised by UK events company Human Race, a subsidiary of Tour de France owners ASO.
Three route options are on offer – Long (161km, costing £49.50), Medium (125km, £47.00), and Short (52km, £44.50).
Tour de France race director Christian Prudhomme said: “The Tour De France is a truly global event and nothing shows this off better than our L'Etape series.
“The UK has let cycling into its heart and we are proud to see the legacy of The Tour De France still burning bright in the L'Etape UK Sportive.
“I am excited to see the event taking the next step to its new home in the Chilterns where the cycling is both challenging and beautiful and look forward to seeing the British cycling family out enjoying it.”
Nick Rusling, CEO of Human Race, commented: “The Tour de France is the pinnacle of cycling in the world. We at Human Race can’t wait to bring its magic to the Chilterns on Bastille Day for what should become one of the great annual days cycling.”
Full information is available on the event website..
In September last year, L’Etape London, as the event was then known, was postponed until the following month due to a severe weather warning that also led to the organisers of what would have been the debut edition of the Vélo South closed road sportive in Sussex pulling cancelling that event.
Born in Scotland, Simon moved to London aged seven and now lives in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds with his miniature schnauzer, Elodie. He fell in love with cycling one Saturday morning in 1994 while living in Italy when Milan-San Remo went past his front door. A daily cycle commuter in London back before riding to work started to boom, he's been news editor at road.cc since 2009. Handily for work, he speaks French and Italian. He doesn't get to ride his Colnago as often as he'd like, and freely admits he's much more adept at cooking than fettling with bikes.