It’s old news I know but I have finally got around to posting this blog item!

We all know how amazing the weekend of the Tour de France in Yorkshire was, I think it surpassed everyone’s expectations. As an avid photographer at first sight it seemed like an amazing opportunity to get some good pictures of the biggest annual sporting event in the world but as a cycling fan I also knew that the crowds would be huge (though even I was not expecting the actual amount of people lining the route) and so it would be nigh on impossible to get any decent shots due to the vast crowds and the speed of the race. I also didn’t want to miss the race by looking through a camera lens as it passed by.

Luckily for me another opportunity presented itself one Saturday morning a few weeks before the Grand Depart – I heard on the grapevine that Team Sky were doing a reconnaissance of the whole of Stage 2. As usual t’internet provided a few more clues and updates on their whereabouts and so here was the chance to get some decent shots without a hundred people’s smartphones getting in the way of my viewfinder. So I grabbed my camera bag and my two sons and we jumped in the car and headed off to Oxenhope Moor above Haworth.

Obviously I was not the only person to get wind of this bit of news but it surprised me just how many people had the same idea as me and were waiting by the roadside with cameras in hand. We all had very little information but kept checking on Twitter for news of their whereabouts. As it turned out it was a long wait of around two hours but it was great – the sense of anticipation palpable even though this was just a few guys on a leisurely ride to check out the route they would tackle a few weeks later.

As suspected this was a good opportunity to get some shots which would prove to be impossible to get on the weekend of the actual event. Chris Froome, Richie Porte, Mikel Nieve and David Lopez sped by without breaking sweat but because of the lack of crowds I was able to get a couple of decent shots.