Wetherby Lockdown

Road Bikes took over the town.

This weekend saw Yorkshire hosting another major international cycling competition, the UCI Road Bike World Championships 2019. Over the last few weeks, there have been scary signs all over the approaches to and side streets of Wetherby saying 'Road Closed - Saturday 21st Sept 10:00 to 17:00'. The town has three major approaches, and each of them was being closed. We were, in effect, in lockdown. It resulted in a fair bit of carnage to our diaries; Nathan's football match cancelled as the opposing team wouldn't be able to get to the pitches, Aidan's swimming lesson missed as we couldn't exit our estate, and Jill ended up rearranging a haircut. A bit of grumbling ensued.

Waiting for the riders.

Anyway, we decided that if we can't beat them, we'd join them. We had a lazy start to the day, with Aidan and I getting up first. I rustled up bacon butties and tea and coffee, and - after what seemed like an inordinate amount of messing around including me forgetting my phone and having to take one of the cats back home as she wanted to follow us  - we walked down into town. It wasn't as busy as I expected when we got there, but it soon picked up.

The format of the race was different from the Tour de France and the Tour de Yorkshire, as there were far more small groups of riders, sometimes even travelling on their own with the motorbike escorts. Wetherby High Street was pretty genteel in its applause, but the parts of town by the Market Square were much more rumbustious, with hoardings being pounded to make a noise as riders went through.

Wetherby served as the starting point for the whole event, with riders coming out of the Market Square. For want of a better term, you could walk past the 'paddock' or 'pit lane' and see all these elite para-athletes preparing for action. It was really impressive. I was also amused by the local dignitaries doing their best to meet them. Great fun. The atmosphere was really nice.

After we watched the last race start, we wandered the artisan market (craft fair outside), enjoyed some food and a nice pint at the Mews. Mine was a lovely coffee beer.

Coffee and Beer, perfect!

We wandered through town to complete the competition to find the numbers at various local businesses' windows and then headed back up the hill to home and dinner. The events people were really efficient, and the place was tidy and cleared up with the staging and more removed before 6pm. 

It was a great afternoon; I'm glad Yorkshire has built this link to cycling.

21 September 2019