Tour de France Leeds

Your favourite days out round Leeds
stutterdog
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Post by stutterdog »

raveydavey wrote: stutterdog wrote: raveydavey wrote: I'm sure that in months and years to come, people will generally look back on the Tdf's visit to Yorkshire as a great weekend and a good thing.The passage of time will allow us to forget about the council hangers on, the traffic chaos, the incompetence in getting the roads re-opened and the choice of route out of Leeds city centre (which the wider audience will know or care little about) and remember the fantastic racing, the beautiful weather and the amazing scenery that Gods Own County has to offer and the spectacle we gave the world - who will hopefully now want to visit us.I doubt that Yorkshire has ever looked better on the telly.For those who've mocked the coverage, the whole two days has been carried live on ITV4 in HD (much of day one was simultaneously shown on ITV1 in HD as well). The commentators were not only experts from the cycling world, but had clearly put a lot of time into their research of the places the race passed through and apart from the odd mispronunciation did a great job of providing over 5 hours live commentary each day. ITV4 also has ongoing live coverage of the whole race with a highlights show every evening for those of us who will be at work during the day.The only fly in the ointment was watching todays Stage 2, and being surprised that a more photogenic route hadn't been chosen into Sheffield. A route past scrapyards, waste land and semi-derelict factories seemed at odds with the care that had clearly gone into planning what had gone before. Then I realised that actually was the most picturesque route into Yorkshires least favourite city...      Totally agree with your comment! Did I read somewhere some months back that London was trying to hi-jack Le Tour after all the effort that people in Yorkshire had put in to bring it here? I can't remember what the details were at the time but I believe there were some sour grapes at Yorkshires success at being awarded the Le Grande Departe! I hope it rains on their parade today!But whatever happens I don't think they'll beat the turnout that was attained here in Yorkshire over the past 2 days! You're right - and one thing that did vex me was that jowl faced posh boy David "Dave" Cameron lapping up a freebie in at the finish in Harrogate on Day 1 and tweeting what a great job Yorkshire had done.Clearly his selective memory had deleted any recollection of his governments support for a bid from Edinburgh over us and the threat that we'd get no money from Whitehall when we'd won the bid:"It's interesting that David Cameron's coming up for the Tour, when he supported the Scottish [Edinburgh] bid," said Dee Marshall, head of communications at Welcome to Yorkshire. "He's never supported the Yorkshire bid and has not given us one pennyworth towards any of the marketing of Yorkshire or the events around it."http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014 ... -yorkshire Thanks for that RaveyD! Well, we all know why he wanted Edinburgh to have the Tour don't we!
ex-Armley lad

Richard A Thackeray
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Post by Richard A Thackeray »

Johnny39 wrote: Leodian wrote: Something I've learnt about the TDF is that the 'Yellow Jersey' worn by the leader is not what I would call a jersey. I don't know if there is a specific clothing name for it but is put on by putting hands through the sleeves and then the back, which was open, is either zipped, velcroded or buttoned closed.Superb scenes and scenery again today and amazing crowds. Great views at Kex Gill. Sort of a wrong way round "cardie" eh, Leo? Only for the presentation though, to prevent the wearer having to tug it on over his headThe jersey for the stages, is the usual full front-zip jerseyAs for me, I rode up towards Harewood the first day, ending up opposite 'Lofthouse Lodge'(?), where the road from Wike comes out onto the A61And, on the Sunday, I rode down to Penistone, & onto the summit of Woodhead Pass

WiggyDiggy
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Post by WiggyDiggy »

Leodian wrote: "cockwombles" made me WiggyDiggy. It's a new expression to me. Hehe it was coined on a cycling site I use and seems to now represent (well IMO) generally numptyness.On the subject of cockwombleness, Northern Rail and the train service in general seems to be getting a bi of a pasting ATM Now I don't mind too much that their bike provision was woeful (many people dont have the legs for a long ride) and I understand foot passengers should have priority was a decision made some time ago.But that said, did they really have NO other trains anywhere in the country to lay on extra? The Harrogate > Leeds line seems to have strained but coped (just), but from the stories below the Blackpool>York line ran out of capacity by Preston leaving anyone after that stranded unable to get on.I'll lay a certain amount of responsibility at the passengers (travel early etc etc) but it really highlights that our train service simply is not good enough and too inflexible to adapt. What were your experiences of train travel on the day?http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/n ... ?ref=var_0

raveydavey
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Post by raveydavey »

WiggyDiggy wrote: Leodian wrote: "cockwombles" made me WiggyDiggy. It's a new expression to me. Hehe it was coined on a cycling site I use and seems to now represent (well IMO) generally numptyness.On the subject of cockwombleness, Northern Rail and the train service in general seems to be getting a bi of a pasting ATM Now I don't mind too much that their bike provision was woeful (many people dont have the legs for a long ride) and I understand foot passengers should have priority was a decision made some time ago.But that said, did they really have NO other trains anywhere in the country to lay on extra? The Harrogate > Leeds line seems to have strained but coped (just), but from the stories below the Blackpool>York line ran out of capacity by Preston leaving anyone after that stranded unable to get on.I'll lay a certain amount of responsibility at the passengers (travel early etc etc) but it really highlights that our train service simply is not good enough and too inflexible to adapt. What were your experiences of train travel on the day?http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/n ... ?ref=var_0 To be fair, I think Northern rail did everything they could and perhaps a little bit more.Those articles are all very similar in tone (and content for the two Lancastrian ones!) and smack of cheap "journalism" in trying to hype the situation up.Undoubtedly frustrating for those who didn't get on the train, but an event like this was always going to be massively busy and there is only a finite amount of a) rolling stock to run and b) paths on the network to put that rolling stock in.Northern got pretty much everything they had onto the rails. Priority was given to where they knew there would be most demand and additional trains were hired in - from what I can tell the Harrogate line was at pretty much full operational capacity all day and in addition to Northern, East Coast also ran two full HST sets in service from Harrogate when they'd normally run back to Neville Hill empty, all of which was publicised in the run up to the race. That said, by lunchtime on Saturday over 60,000 more people than usual had passed through Leeds station - which is hardly quiet at the best of times - yet the queues were sorted by 2pm, still giving ample time to get people to Harrogate for the end of the stage.Those same hired in trains added to another maximum service to get people out to Hebden Bridge and the like from Leeds on Sunday. Plus there were an awful lot of 'special' bus and coach services being put on from across the wrong side of the hill, which seems to have escaped mention.The "good old days" of BR having trained crew, locomotives and carriages sat idle on a weekend to put specials on are long gone (if they ever existed at all). What taxpayers want to pay for heinously expensive motive power to sit idle all year for use on once in a blue moon occasions such as this?I'm no apologist for the railways, having suffered commuting on them for a long time under both BR and private operators, but this weekend they did their best.PS - those Lancashire Times readers would have had no joy if they'd caught that train in their photo - I'd say its virtually guaranteed you won't get any third rail units operating in West Yorkshire...
Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act – George Orwell

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Leodian
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Post by Leodian »

Richard A Thackeray wrote: Johnny39 wrote: Leodian wrote: Something I've learnt about the TDF is that the 'Yellow Jersey' worn by the leader is not what I would call a jersey. I don't know if there is a specific clothing name for it but is put on by putting hands through the sleeves and then the back, which was open, is either zipped, velcroded or buttoned closed.Superb scenes and scenery again today and amazing crowds. Great views at Kex Gill. Sort of a wrong way round "cardie" eh, Leo? Only for the presentation though, to prevent the wearer having to tug it on over his headThe jersey for the stages, is the usual full front-zip jerseyAs for me, I rode up towards Harewood the first day, ending up opposite 'Lofthouse Lodge'(?), where the road from Wike comes out onto the A61And, on the Sunday, I rode down to Penistone, & onto the summit of Woodhead Pass Thanks Richard. I had only seen the Yellow Jersey being put on at the presentation after Stage 1, so I assumed that was the way it was always worn even during the race.
A rainbow is a ribbon that Nature puts on when she washes her hair.

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Leodian
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Post by Leodian »

I put a photo taken on June 27 2014 in my post on 27-Jun-2014 20:36:52. I thought I would post this updated photo that I took today (July 10 2014). It shows 3 of the 4 bicycles have been recently put into use as flower holders (the white bike has gone). It's a nice touch. I wonder how long the cycles will stay?
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A rainbow is a ribbon that Nature puts on when she washes her hair.

Cardiarms
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Post by Cardiarms »

They're probably annuals so the first cold nights of autumn will see them off.

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Leodian
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Post by Leodian »

Cardiarms wrote: They're probably annuals so the first cold nights of autumn will see them off. The heat/humidness today is almost seeing me off!
A rainbow is a ribbon that Nature puts on when she washes her hair.

WiggyDiggy
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Post by WiggyDiggy »

The TDF shop is still open in town, probably trying to sell T-Shirts and Mugs still for £10/15 lolI'm keeping any eye on for the inevitable sale and will pick something up.

Bruno
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Post by Bruno »

We've not heard anything from Jon on here since he revealed his plan to sneak into the woods near Harewood House with his hammock and his strike-anywhere matches. Does anybody know if Harewood House has any dungeons?
The older I get, the better I was.

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