More hints at the route of September’s highly-anticipated Isle of Wight stage of the Tour of Britain have been revealed, including a dramatic uphill finish to The Needles.
The Isle of Wight will host the final stage of the cycling event on 11th September with the event getting underway in Ryde, as reported by Island Echo last week.
Other details of the final route have yet to be announced for an event that will be televised across the world. But a local councillor has let the cat out of the bag…
Speaking at a Newport and Carisbrooke Community Council meeting on Monday, Councillor Jones-Evans, also the Isle of Wight Council’s cabinet member for regeneration, business development and tourism, said the route will head through the centre of Newport.
Originally, she said, the event was only going to visit the Island’s county town by using the dual carriageway, which she thought was not good enough. However, she said that she had got organisers to change their mind.
The route, Cllr Jones-Evans says, will see the cyclists start in Ryde, then go through Sandown and Newport before finishing at the top of Tennyson Down – The Needles Battery.
While members of the community council were excited about the race, further questions about the route specifics were raised, including the potential to go up to Carisbrooke Castle.
Councillor Geoff Brodie, chair of the community council and a keen watcher of cycle races, said the worst thing in a professional cycling race was a flat stage as the athletes would go past quickly. Cllr Brodie said the more hills the organisers could build into the route the better and questioned whether the race was going to pass through the town only once, as the stages were usually around 100 miles long.
Cllr Jones-Evans said she had no more details but the final route was expected to be announced in early March.
Wow nice, a worldwide, event being viewed on TV through the rundown centre of Newport, what a great idea. More chaos being created for what?
Have a day off, misrable old f**t.
Worldwide event? Don’t make me laugh.
As the event demands hills surely it would make sense to go through Ventnor then onto Newport?
Apparently, they considered Ventnor, but there are to many needles on the roads.
IoW council definitive map shows the route up to the Needles as a footpath. It will be interesting to see how the local authority manage to respond to the proposed change of use.
St Boniface makes more sense for the finish as it’s on the UKs top 100 climb list.