The Tour de Yorkshire

Subject: The Tour de Yorkshire.

It's an old adage, you never knew how lucky you are until you didn't have it any more.
Covering a multitude of things health is an obvious one, youthful optimism, freedom to go where we wanted to go, to make our own decisions. If we were lucky the work we did and the people we worked with, the weather the scenery, the disposable income and the surety that there was always more to come. 
I have been watching the cycling, The Tour of Yorkshire, passing today through the area I cycled in all those years ago. From Halifax to Hebron Bridge and Haworth, crossing Bronte Country down into Skipton, onto Bardon Moor passing Kilnsey Crag up Park -Rash,  Marsham and then climbing the formidable Greenhow , on to Otley and finally, the run in to Leeds.
The signature drystone walls, the twists and turns as the narrow road rises and falls following the contours of this hilly county. It makes a photogenic paradise as the helicopter zooms in and out, long shots close ups, shots of rock climbers abseiling down the face of on Kilnsey Crag, sheep on the hills and cattle waiting to be milked and of course the crowds. Yorkshire crowds have become a legend, it's seems that cycling taps into a stream of enthusiasm which probably goes back to the childhood interest many youngsters have for cycling in this loverly scenic county, full to the brim with rugged villages. Not the poncey Cotswold thatch with its trim middle class gardens but instead the stonewalled cottages with their stonewalled boundary walls cottages which seem themselves to follow the contours of the ground, snuggled into each other for comfort as if against the inclement weather.
The roads, hemmed in by stone walls, built hundreds of years ago, maintenance free, following the line of least resistance as they snake up and down the hillside, corralling the sheep close to the farmyard for winter, in summer, giving the flock a qualified freedom in the hills.

Yes we were lucky to have been born here in Yorkshire. The space to cycle and explore, a limited number of motor cars meant we owned the roads as we snaked, two abreast maybe 20 riders, up and down these roads on which today's race was run. Simple healthy exercise we road our bikes pleased with ourselves to be able to climb those hills which today we marvelled as the peloton picked its way between the cheering spectators, around the hairpin bends the incline increasing with each push of the peddle. We also had in our minds eye our cycling heroes of the day.  Fausto Coppi, Jacques Anquetil, Louison Bobet, we carried their image as we sweated up the climbs or decended at breakneck speed down into the next village.

Far from parental eyes we revelled in the freedom to be ourselves and more, to prove to ourselves, where our limits lay.