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What would a three-week Tour of Britain route look like?
The list of races falling by the wayside in the UK seems to be ever-growing. The Tour de Yorkshire, the Women’s Tour of Scotland and Tour Series have all been dissolved. Even the RideLondon Classique now seems to be under threat. Throughout all this turmoil, however, the Tour of Britain has remained strong, billing itself as the ‘UK’s largest free-to-attend event’ each year.
The race has received a new lease of life in 2024, with British Cycling taking over as well as adding a glitzy new banking sponsor. That said, the hunger for a truly major British race remains insatiable. It’s understandable too: we’ve had British riders winning Grand Tours, world titles and Olympic medals for over a decade now. With all of that going on in the pro peloton, why doesn’t the UK have a bigger race?
Britain’s biggest bike race feels like a sleeping giant. In a country of almost 70 million people that has such a cycling culture, the Tour of Britain might be selling itself short with only six stages on offer in 2024. This isn’t a small nation of cycling minnows. So why couldn’t the Tour of Britain expand to three weeks and become a fourth Grand Tour alongside the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España?
Let’s get our thinking hats on and imagine a three-week-long Tour of Britain. What would a British Grand Tour look like?
Expanding the field of play
The week-long Tour of Britain we have right now isn’t really a Tour of Britain. The race is often confined to a select handful of counties and towns and it rarely spans across the three countries of Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), let alone crossing the Irish Sea into Northern Ireland.
In other words, there’s far more to Britain than the current Tour portrays. As much as we glorify the allure of exotic cycling destinations on the Continent and beyond, Britain is a pretty beautiful place in its own right. Whether it’s the Cornish seaside or the drystone-walled hillsides of Yorkshire, there’s more to Britain than the current Tour of Britain parcours lets us peek at. Britain also has a thriving gravel scene, a decent spluttering of cobbled climbs and an urban cycling community all ready to welcome in the country’s biggest bike race. The Tour should also be accessible for fans across the country, from the south of England up to the north of Scotland.
If we’re looking deeper, the role of Grand Départ city feels pretty small for the current Tour of Britain. The race is currently underselling itself considering the Grand Tours sell hosting rights for millions of Euros. If the Tour of Britain were three weeks long, the honour of hosting the Grand Départ could be rotated through regions across the UK and beyond – maybe even across the Irish Sea. A prologue around Derry’s Bogside? Sign me up.
Dip into big cities
I know it’s difficult to close off the streets of a major British city for an afternoon of bike racing, but there’s no better advert for the idea of ditching your car in favour of two-wheeled, pedal-powered transport. In an age where every British city seems to be edging towards a low-emission zone, an elite-level race’s presence should be warmly welcomed.
We all know how successful the London 2012 Olympic road events were, likewise Glasgow and Birmingham for the Commonwealth Games. The races there were widely watched on the ground and on TV, and the races drummed up some real support for cycling. That spirit could return, even for just one day if the Tour of Britain came to town.
People aren’t going to go out of their way to go to a humdrum town to watch a stage finish if there’s no attraction to it (such as an iconic mountaintop finish, for instance). There will be more eyes on the racing if the route ventures into bigger cities. This is attractive for everyone. There’ll be more awareness of the event, more column inches written about it and more sponsors willing to back such an event.
UK cities such as Manchester, Liverpool and Edinburgh are already known across the world. By showcasing them in this televised open-air event, the race could market itself as a tourism spotlight. Maybe people would even tune in if they knew the Tour of Britain was swinging by their favourite Premier League stadium.
Throw in some future iconic mountains
The three Grand Tours have their own postcard finales. These usually come on some iconic mountain passes such as the Alpe d’Huez or Mont Ventoux in the Tour, the Monte Zoncolan and Stelvio Pass in the Giro, and the Angliru and Lagos de Covadonga in the Vuelta. To elevate the Tour of Britain to that level, we need to manufacture some iconic finales fitting of this grand status.
For this, let’s begin our search in the Highlands. The mountainous terrain of western Scotland is ideal for a grand stage finish in terms of spectacle and difficulty. Tourists already flock to the Highlands, and its mountain passes and lochs are recognisable the world over. The Tour of Britain, therefore, has the ideal canvas to work with here. Surprisingly, the west coast of Scotland has rarely featured in the Tour of Britain during the years. The closest we’ve ever gone is Glasgow.
Bealach na Bà, Scotland’s most famous cycling climb, is prime for a top-tier summit finish. The 9.5km pass at an average gradient of 6.5% would warrant Category 1 status at the Tour de France if that’s anything to go by. The Pass of the Cattle – as its Gaelic name translates to – is a winding climb akin to an Alpine test, albeit about half the height and length. The desolate landscape around would make this feel like Scotland’s answer to Mont Ventoux.
South of the border, Great Dun Fell in England is the highest road in the UK. It’s usually a closed road up to a weather station, but local cyclists have been climbing this mountain for decades now. It’s a single-track road with a steep incline of around 9% gradient. It even has slopes that ramp up to 16%. In short, this is the kind of climb Primož Roglič eats up.
Located in the Pennines, the Fell is perfectly positioned for a Tour of Britain stage. The 7km-long test is close to major cities and tourist trails in the northwest of England. It’s a surprise to me that it hasn’t featured in the race before, considering it’s right under our noses.
- Read our Classic Climb up Bealach na Bà
A royal arrival
Like other Grand Tours, a three-week Tour of Britain would require a big processional finish akin to the Champs-Elysées finale at the Tour de France. For this, London is the obvious choice. It’s a world city that equals the prestige of Paris with the tourism factor that would bring in TV viewers.
The existing FreeCycle event and RideLondons could be added in to make this final weekend a whole festival of cycling, much like Nice did at the exiled Grand Arivée of this year’s Tour de France. The expansive (though not necessarily reliable) transport links into London also mean that a greater amount of people will only be a train ride away from catching the action. Even if it means having to close off the capital and, for the race convoy, lugging through a cross-country transfer, the allure of a London arrival is priceless.
I hear your frustration, northerners. The processional finish could also be a responsibility passed around the United Kingdom. Perhaps Manchester, Glasgow or Manchester could step up to the plate and host Stage 21. After all, it would be tough to close off London for a day every year so the Tour of Britain could finish. This is part of why the Tour of Britain doesn’t visit the capital anymore.
Our 21-stage Tour of Britain route
In the name of journalistic research, I delved deep into a road atlas to create a hypothetical three-week Tour of Britain route. For context, the proposed route uses real roads and existing climbs across England, Scotland and Wales. Some finishes are familiar, some will be a little more unknown.
This prototype Frankenstein of a route spans the island of Great Britain from top to toe. The aim was to create a route with real GC potential that simultaneously showcases the UK’s diverse landscape and cities. Plus, consideration has been taken to guarantee that cycling fans can access the route within a couple of hours (at most) from all major population centres. There are three proper mountaintop finishes, plenty of punchy finales, eight-ish flat stages and two time-trials. This hypothetical parcours comes out to 3,165km in total over the 21 stages.
If Cornwall didn’t need any more tourists, I have chosen the seaside peninsula as the host of the Grand Départ – or should we just call it the Big Start? The opening stages would head out from Britain’s western frontier and set sail through Dartmoor with an uphill finish as early as Stage 2 at Haytor. For the nostalgics, this Devon climb is where Simon Yates took his first pro win back in 2013.
The parcours then snakes around the West Country with an influential time-trial on Stage 5 from Bath to the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. The race would soon cross Offah’s Dyke into Wales for a puncheur’s day around the Brecon Beacons. This is followed up by a gruelling stage through Snowdonia that ends on the tough gravel climb up to Electric Mountain near Llanberis.
Week two would be an English affair. The racing opens on Stage 10 with a stage from The Wirral to Manchester, before heading deep into Yorkshire for some hilly days that will remind viewers of the lost Tour de Yorkshire. The aforementioned Great Dun Fell will spike out of the profile in the middle weekend of racing on Stage 14 before a scenic lap around the Lake District to round out Stage 15.
Beginning from the Dumfriesshire coast, Scotland would host the final week of the grandest Tour of Britain. After a Glasgow welcome on Stage 16, the Highlands and Grampians arrive. A picturesque finale to Glenfinnan will whet the appetite before the stinging summit finish finales up to Bealach na Bà and Cairngorm Ski Centre near Aviemore. One final race against the clock on Stage 20 would funnel the riders along Edinburgh’s Royal Mile for a final GC hierarchy is settles under the shadow of Edinburgh Castle.
After a transfer down south, the processional Stage 21 would start from Hertfordshire and travel into central London via Epping Forest and the Olympic Park. A small circuit around Whitehall, Birdcage Walk and The Mall would round out the race with one last sprint finale outside Buckingham Palace.
Well…is it possible?
The logistics of a three-week Tour of Britain could be manageable. Although current organisers have quelled the difficulties of organising road closures, the UK has a strong history of pulling off spectacular roadside events. Heck, this might be the perfect remedy for a country that seems ever more frustrated with cyclists.
The local cycling scene is crying out for some change. The axing of the Tour Series, Women’s Tour of Scotland and RideLondon pro races makes it seem like the UK is a country on the decline in terms of pro cycling events. With some big financial backing, a three-weeker around Britain could be the serum needed for the domestic scene for the here-and-now and the long term. The legacy of an event like this could be huge. Kids will no doubt be left inspired watching riders swing past their schools, playgrounds and local sports centres as they negotiate their way around a TV-friendly parcours across the whole country.
The landscape is there, the roads are in place. A British Grand Tour might not be as far-flung of an idea as you think.
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