I’m a great fan of the Tour of Britain, and have followed it from the early days of The Milk Race.
The 2019 Ovo Energy Tour of Britain was an eight-stage men’s professional road cycling race.
It was the sixteenth running of the modern version of the Tour of Britain and the 79th British tour in total.
The race started on 7 September in Glasgow and finished on 14 September in Manchester.
The reason, I enjoyed this one, was the fact that it passed the end of my road… and I only had to walk 100 yards to watch the riders flash by, and record it on the video recorder at the same time.
This was Stage 5 on Wednesday 11 September from Birkenhead Park to Birkenhead Park. The last time the Tour of Britain was in the area was 2014.
A fairly flat stage that went in a big loop around Wirral and the top end of Cheshire, and ended with a finishing circuit around the top end of Wirral, making it very spectator friendly.
A total distance of 174km (108.1mls). It was won by Dylan Groenewegen from Team Jumbo-Visma.
It ended in a Sprint Finish with Mark Cavendish finishing in 10th place.
I manged to get a good photograph of the Manx Missile riding passed.
The Full route ran out as:
#1 Glasgow to Kirkcudbright (201.5km) – Saturday 7 September
#2 The Scottish Borders Stage (165.9km) – Sunday 8 September
#3 Berwick-upon-Tweed to Newcastle-upon-Tyne (183.2km) – Monday 9 Sept
#4 Gateshead to Kendal (173.2km) – Tuesday 10 September
#5 The Wirral Stage (174.1km) – Wednesday 11 September
#6 Pershore ITT (14.4km) – Thursday 12 September
#7 Warwick to Burton Dassett Country Park (188.7km) – Friday 13 September
#8 Altrincham to Deansgate, Manchester (166km) – Saturday 14 September
The 2019 Tour of Britain was won by Mathieu Van der Poel of ProTeam Alpecin-Fenix
The last time the Tour of Britain came close to home was in 2014, when Stage 1 was run from Liverpool to Liverpool.
Mark Cavendish came in 3rd that time, even though he crashed into a badly parked car, and came off his bike.