Route details for the Women’s Tour 2018 are due to be announced later today and we will discover where the country’s elite female cyclists will be visiting this summer.
Suffolk and Essex have played host to both the Women’s Tour and the male version, the Tour of Britain, on several occasions. Here we look back at our connection with the major cycling events.
2017 Clacton-on-Sea hosted an individual time trial stage of the Tour of Britain on September 7 and the following day stage six of the Tour of Britain came to Suffolk.
The stage was entirely hosted in the county, starting in Newmarket and finishing in Aldeburgh. The elite male cyclists passed through Mildenhall, Bury St Edmunds, Framlingham, Woodbridge, Eye, Saxmundham, Leiston and north Ipswich.
2016 The 2016 edition of the Women’s Tour kicked off in Southwold on June 15 with the day one route taking riders to Halesworth, Lowestoft, Bungay and Attleborough before finishing in Norwich.
2015 Stage one of the Women’s Tour 2015 started on June 17 where the last event finished – in Bury St Edmunds. The leg finished in Aldeburgh where Lizzie Armistead famously crashed out of the competition after celebrating victory.
Day two, on June 18, started from Braintree, went up through Halstead, Great Yeldham, Sudbury and Hadleigh before dropping back into Essex and finishing in Clacton-on-sea.
Later that summer Stage seven of the Tour of Britain, held on September 12, started in Fakenham and travelled south through west Suffolk, into Essex and finished in Ipswich.
2014 The first ever Women’s Tour visited Suffolk twice – stage three ran from Felixstowe to Clacton on May 9 and stage five between Harwich and Bury St Edmunds two days later.
2012 Ipswich hosted the opening stage of the men’s tour on September 9, which saw the riders race through Suffolk to the Royal Norfolk Showground.
2011 The seventh stage of the Tour of Britain started out in Bury St Edmunds on September 17 with the route heading north to Sandringham in Norfolk.
2010 The Tour of Britain came to Suffolk for the first time on September 17, 2010 with stage seven taking riders from Bury St Edmunds to Colchester.
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