‘THE HUMAN SCARS ARE WITH US STILL’
LIGHTNING STRUCK twice for Stuart Price, whose bike-hire business at Fremington, near Reeth, was right in the path of the floodwater.
“It came on the eve of Britain’s biggest bike event of the year and it was going to be held here,” he said. “People were going to be camping out. But it all had to be scrapped.”
The loss of income from the Ard Rock Festival brought devastating financial consequences.
But worse was to come. A further week of rain in late September caused the last-minute rerouting of the UCI World Road Championships, whose competitors were to have cycled across Dales bridges only just rebuilt from the previous deluge.
“We had been preparing for that for months. And then we got done over again by the weather,” Mr Price said.
“In the great scheme of things, we got off lightly – some people lost their homes – but we lost the whole of August and the two biggest events of the year and that’s bound to have an impact.
“For any tourism business, June, July and August are your banker periods – and six months down the line we now haven’t got the financial cushion they would have given us.”
He praised his staff, who had worked “incredibly hard” to reopen the business four days after the July floods and to prepare for the abortive September event – which would have seen a spectator hub and a big video screen at his premises.
But he said many small firms had seen little of the help offered to householders and farms.
“Small businesses prop up the economy in the Yorkshire Dales but most were just left to dry ourselves out,” he said. He remained excited for this year, which will see cyclists in the Tour de Yorkshire take on the bridges the UCI riders never reached.
He said: “It’s important everyone knows it’s business as usual for everyone in the Dales – just as it was the week after the floods in the summer.”