ED'S LETTER
Come the end of September, the eyes of the world will be on Yorkshire as it hosts the UCI Road World Championships. But what will those eyes see? Will it be the Yorkshire of 2014, when the sun shone on a green and pleasant land while the Tour peloton rolled through crowds of happy, cheering fans? Or will it be the Yorkshire of this year’s Tour de Yorkshire, when the rain lashed down, the hills were obscured in mist and the crowds huddled beneath umbrellas? It matters, because if you’ve spent millions to have the world’s top cyclists race through your back yard, you want the global TV audience (estimated at 300 million) to be thinking, ‘Hey, that looks like a nice place to visit on holiday. I hear Wensleydale cheese is delicious.’ You don’t want them thinking, ‘Good God! Those poor people! Do they have to live there all the time? You could die of exposure on those moors!’
Yorkshire in the sun is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Yorkshire in the rain is so bleak it puts the average Scandi Noir detective series to shame.
And, if we’re being honest, it’s not like Britain is overloaded with obvious cycling attractions. We don’t have any epic climbs or iconic roads from famous races. Our roads are potholed and patrolled by angry drivers. The coffee is average. There’s a good reason why most British riders in the Worldtour ranks choose to live abroad.
Which is a shame, because I think actually Britain is a great place to ride. It can be stunning and challenging and surprising, and it would be nice to think that while this magazine promotes the wonders of riding abroad to British riders, the Road World Championships will promote the wonders of riding in Britain to a foreign audience. So let’s just pray that the sun shines.