An army marches on its stomach, reckoned Napoleon. So when the Tour de France invasion comes to Yorkshire next year Jill Turton, who runs the food website Squidbeak, knows just where to eat, drink and relax en route. The Bulb is thrilled that Jill, who also writes for Time Out and the Yorkshire Post, has penned today’s guest post for us. By following Jill’s Le Tour, we can all march to the mighty North to fill our own stomachs. Take it away Jill…
“Yorkshire is an inspirational choice for the 2014 Tour de France. After the success of Team GB at the London 2012 Olympics, and the euphoria around Englishman Bradley Wiggins winning the 2012 Tour, the organisers of Europe’s biggest cycle have chosen Britain to host the first three stages of the 2,174 mile Tour in 2014. Two of those stages will be in Yorkshire.
The Grand Depart on 5th July will be from Cuthbert Broderick’s majestic Victorian Town Hall in Leeds. Over the next two days and 250 miles, the peloton will pedal on a route through the spectacular Yorkshire Dales and vertiginous Pennine hillsides, before heading to Cambridge and then ending in a sprint finish in London, along the Mall to Buckingham Palace.
Unless you are a keen cyclist and want to stand roadside watching 198 riders flash past in the blink of an eye, we suggest you take Le Tour before the tour and at a more leisurely pace. The showpiece route centres round the Yorkshire Dales National Park where you can walk the hills and valleys, stroll through chocolate box villages, sample the local craft ales, watch Wensleydale cheese in production and feast on Yorkshire game and Swaledale lamb. But most of all, you can drink in the views. They inspired the French organisers to choose Yorkshire, and it’s not hard to see why.
If you plan to see the peloton off in Leeds, relax after all that cheering at the Piazza by Anthony, which is a short walk from the town hall in another Cuthbert Broderick building, the beautiful Leeds Corn Exchange. There you will find shops, cafés, a rib shack, a patisserie and, in the central atrium, chef Anthony Flinn’s restaurant.
Ilkley is the gateway town of the Dales, where you can put a picnic together from the famous Betty’s Café Tearooms. Then plunge into
Wharfedale is where the Dales proper begin and the 12th century Bolton Abbey sits splendidly on a bend on the River Wharfe. If you’re feeling flush, eat a Michelin star meal at either the Box Tree in Ilkley or the Devonshire Arms at Bolton Abbey and walk it off amid rivers, waterfalls, wild moorland and miles of dry stone-walls.
From here you pass through a string of pretty villages: Burnsall, Grassington and Kilnsey, with its mighty roadside crag and 40-foot overhang. You can explore the branch roads to the villages of Linton, Malham and Arncliffe, where, in the delightfully unspoilt Falcon Inn, ale is still poured from a china jug.
The peloton will be riding to Kettlewell and over the high pass into Wensleydale, passing close to Aysgarth Falls, where a sparkling River Ure pours over broad tables of limestone. Dawdle in Freeholders Wood, which is carpeted with bluebells and wood anemones in spring. Nearby Hawes is home to the Wensleydale Creamery, with its creamery tour and Wensleydale cheese to take home.
Fifty five miles from Leeds, Le Tour will be heading into my favourite Dale, Swaledale. It will come through the villages of Muker – with cream teas in the village tearoom – and Gunnerside, where in high summer the wildflower meadows, farmed sustainably for generations, bloom with the likes of buttercups, eyebright and melancholy thistle.
At Reeth, the peloton will head south to Leyburn and Middleham, famous for its racehorse stables and Richard III’s ruined castle, then on through pretty East Witton. While the cyclists might grab a musette – a bag of food such as sandwiches and high energy bars – you and I can stop for a perfect gastropub lunch at the lovely Blue Lion. From there it’s a leisurely drive south to Ripon and the World Heritage site, Fountains Abbey, before a sprint finish into genteel Harrogate. There you’ll find elegant shops, sedate Valley Gardens, glorious Turkish Baths and, of course, Fodder, an irresistible emporium of the finest Yorkshire food produce.
The bar at the Blue Lion
After a slap up dinner at Van Zellars, you can congratulate yourself on completing 120 miles and stage one of the Tour de France 2014, wearing not the yellow jersey but a well earned bib gourmand.”
Jill Turton is a food and travel writer based in York. Jill writes a regular restaurant column for the Yorkshire Post and writes for newspapers, magazines and food websites. In 2010 she wrote the Time Out Guide to the Lake District and is an inspector for a prominent national food guide.
With her colleague Mandy Wragg, Jill runs a website called Squidbeak, guiding visitors to the best places to eat and stay in Yorkshire. Reviews of all the places mentioned in this article can be found on www.squidbeak.co.uk. Jill and Mandy Tweet @squidbeakfood.
*Images courtesy of K Storey YDNPA, dimity.com and The Blue Lion