Tour de Tweed’s a warm up for the big event!

Touring tweedily: (l-r) Ross Olsen, Erika Constable, Jon Hunt, Philip Pearson, Clare Hirst, Aaron Hirst and Nick Boughton

EXCITEMENT is building that Saddleworth could reap big benefits from next year’s Tour de France.

And a group of keen cyclists is planning to bring a unique twist to the world’s biggest free event by staging their very own... Tour de Tweed!

There will be no fashionable Lycra sports clothes or sleek carbon fibre bikes scorching round the country lanes. Instead entrants will be clad in clothes more reminiscent of Jeeves and Wooster than Bradley Wiggins.

The hardy group has already completed its first Tour de Tweed challenge — travelling from Lydgate to Heights above Delph. Quietly flushed with success, organiser Philip Pearson is hoping to stage another “tour” to coincide with the arrival of the international event next July.

The Saddleworth Tour de Tweed riders were greeted by the Royal Oak at Heights by landlord Michael Fancy and his wife Sheila.

Michael said: “The ride was great fun. It really captured the days when folk would travel everywhere by bike.”

The real Tour de France, The Grand Depart, is on Saturday, July 5, with the first stage from Leeds to Harrogate then the following day Sunday, July 6, Sheffield to York.