Cycling is more than just a race

Subject: Cycling is more than just the race.

The beauty of the French countryside seen from the helicopter shots of the Tour de France have been a tremendous fillip to enticing people to travel and see France. The countryside, flowing mile upon mile, the traditional upper class chateau perched in amongst the shrubs and gardens of their estate, the churches and cathedrals, the rustic gite or the casas rarules and the austere majesty of the mountains with its narrow strip of road winding ever upwards to the top.
In England it's different. The land mass and the population density is different, the roads are different the houses are different and usually the weather is different. Today it's the final stage of a cycle race which started in Scotland, descending  down  through Northumberland into Yorkshire and then across the Pennines to finish in Manchester.

It's been beautiful weather right through the race setting off the countryside to its best. The villages quaintly situated by a river or stream, the road which a century or more ago used to be a cart track for horses, now a track covered in tarmac, twisting and turning as it followed the contours of the hills, finding the easiest gradient for the horse.
Up and down the hills along the valley floor this was my cycling terrain when I was young. The villages are unchanged, the dry stone walls, disappearing over the fields and up onto the moors are unchanged and are part of the antiquity of the place. The cows, the sheep, the timeless feel of the place as if I had never been away brought back how lucky I was to have been born 'Up North' amongst the uncluttered scenery, most of it unoccupied, most of it ours to explore. 
Today the roads are closed to traffic for the race but back then the motor traffic was so sparse and respectful, (virtually all the drivers had been cyclists in their youth) as  we twirled along, not comprehending how lucky we were to be born in that time, a time of national rebuilding and hope, a time of optimism and satisfaction, a time when people mattered.
The racing cyclist swept  off the hills, down through the village, gone in a twinkling of an eye, the village resumed its slumber. Up the hills they sweated, down the dales the helicopter capturing the uniqueness of a life style which has remained unchanged for 200 years. The farmers with their dogs and the tractor husbanding the animals, milking the cows, moving the sheep to new pasture. Life has by and large stood still for these people, remote from the busy ways 'Down South'. Set in a uncompromising  time warp oblivious to the flights of fancy of the city dweller, their hand me down skills still valued in the fields around the farm and maybe now with Brexit, new markets might open up as the stuff from the Continent drys up and the market rediscovers what has always been right there on our own  door step