BOARDMAN'S £1.5bn BEE CYCLE NETWORK CREATING A BUZZ

(pictures: A shared cycling and walking bridge spanning a  major road in Stockholm)

Work begins on Wigan scheme

MIGHT we one day look back and say that Wigan is where the Greater Manchester cycling revolution began in 2019? 

I don’t want to get carried away, not after so many false dawns in the  UK, but as I type this there are shovels at work on the Wigan canal towpath.  Work has begun on Olympic champion Chris Boardman’s blue print for Greater Manchester, the first major city wide cycling and walking network in the UK.

It’s called the Bee Network and it will run to 1000 miles across 10 boroughs at an estimated cost of £1.5bn, serving 2.7 million people.

Today, about 250 million car journeys a year, of less than one kilometre each, are made by people in Manchester.  Those trips could be a 15-minute walk or a five-minute bike ride.

Many are for the school run.  In the Netherlands, 50 per cent of school children cycle to school, compared to less than 2 per cent in Manchester.

The Bee Network aims to address this by providing a safe alternative choice to always driving.

Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham,  who appointed Boardman as Cycling and Walking Commissioner, says.-   “Greater Manchester has a long history of doing innovative things and our approach to the Bee Network is no different.”

 “If we’re to cut congestion and clean up our air, decisive action is needed. I want to make Greater Manchester one of the top 10 places in the world to live and its action of this sort which will help to deliver that promise.”

This first section being constructed now is known locally as the “Muddy Mile”, along a stretch of waterway in Astley. It will run from Wigan Pier, through Leigh and across the Salford boundary to Monton and Patricroft. And presumably the mud will be a goner.

The £212,000 project is being funded by the Mayor’s Cycling and Walking Challenge Fund, The Bridgewater Canal Company and Wigan Council.

We shouldn’t be surprised if Boardman’s grand plan succeeds. As an athlete he earned the moniker of professor for his dedicated application of sports science to deliver his goals. Principal among them his famous Barcelona Olympic gold in 1992, which launched British cycling on its trajectory to greatness. And boosted Manchester’s bid to build Britain’s first indoor velodrome.

If Manchester sets the cycling trend, will other towns and cities follow?

So can Boardman bring the same clear eyed perspective in his sporting achievements to his latest desire to make cycling safer across the nation? And so enable the humble bike at last to be a major player in the integrated transport system so urgently needed to help reduce the carbon burning which otherwise promises to be the death of us.

Boardman’s is an ambitious project and it has wide public support.

Currently there are 42 schemes in the plans for the Bee network of cycling and walking routes across Greater Manchester. 

They include 319 new and upgraded crossings and junctions and 70 miles of segregated new cycling routes.

Some of these schemes are still to be approved by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA). Burnham has pledged £115m of the £160m received from the government’s Transforming Cities Fund for local transport improvements while £88m will come from local contributions.

So far they’ve got 204 million in committed spend across 42 projects and they are seeking additional funding. 

Plans include a cycling and walking corridor in Rochdale; a route between Manchester Piccadilly and Victoria stations; a cycling and walking bridge to link Stockport railway station with a proposed new interchange;   a continuous cycling and walking corridor between Salford Quays and Manchester city centre; and a ‘Mini Holland’ scheme in Levenshulme.  As the name implies, “Mini Holland” aims to emulate the street layouts in Holland prioritising cycling and walking over motor traffic.

All the schemes are due to be completed by 2023, said a Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) spokeswoman. Investment in the schemes will represent around £18 per head per year on cycling and walking for the next four years, a massive increase on central government’s pathetic investment in cycling which has dropped to less than a £1 per head!

Mayor Burnham has risen to the challenge

You may recall Boardman’s bitter disappointment a couple of years ago at former prime minister David Cameron’s decision not  to provide Cabinet backing for the Get Britain Cycling Report, by far the most comprehensive transport blueprint for cycling across England.

Cameron, like a host of leading politicians before him, said cycling development should be left to the Local Authorities, knowing full well they don’t have the funding and in many cases nor do they have the political will.

Burnham has risen to the challenge in Manchester and who better than Boardman to realise them.  Their work has inspired two other Local Authorities to appoint their own cycling Czars.

They are the former BMX international and world track cycling champion Shanaze Reade in the West Midlands and Paralympic swimming and cycling Olympic champion Dame Sarah Storey in Sheffield.

As CYCLING UK said in their bi-monthly  Cycle, “if the new cycling czars inspire the public, politicians “may show us the money".

Heads in the clouds

Yates fights back…plus

First village to be taken by the sea 

And they’re off! The GC race in the Giro came alive in the Alps on Sunday when Britain’s Yates quickly followed by the home favourite  Nibali attacked on the last climb of the closing kilometres of the stage, tracked by race leader, Ecuador’s Carapaz, leaving second overall Roglic of Slovenia unable to respond. 

But the leading pair out front for 200 kilometres held them off, and it was Italy’s  Cataldo who won his first Giro stage after 10 years of trying, leading out and holding off breakaway partner Cattaneo to the line.

Desperate stuff.

Well, not really. This is what you call desperate.

This is the story of the North Wales village destined to be the first in Britain to vanish below rising sea levels.  It was in a magazine article, following an interview with a Hollywood star! Opposite the story of the doomed village was an advert for a cream for dry skin.

This is the village of Fairbourne on Barmouth Bay, home to 850 residents, protected by a sea wall but barely above sea level. Gwynedd council reckon they cannot afford to defend the village indefinitely, from storms and the gradual sea rise.

Residents are to be moved out in 26 years or so, to become Britain’s first climate refugees. They are not expected to receive any compensation for the loss of their homes and resettlement plans are unclear.

What I find bizarre is why this terrible story isn't making eadlines on every national newspaper and on TV news.

It’s as if climate change has become just another story, pitching for attention alongside all the usual news stuff…like crime and politics, film stars, and cake baking competitions and sport.

The article said there are 104,000 properties at risk of coastal flooding in Wales.
And along the English coast nearly 530,000 properties are at risk,  according to report for the government Committee on Climate Change last year. Yet the public are being kept in the dark.

They don’t want anyone to panic.  They don’t want anyone to know they haven’t a clue what to do.

Well, we should be fearful. These stories should be the one and only story in the papers and on the television. Blank pages either side.  TV Programmes suspended before and after the announcement of the next place near you to be destined to be flooded for ever, and asking, will you take in these wretched people who have lost their homes?

We need to be fearful. Fearful enough not to use the car for unnecessary trips, such as a few 100 yards to the supermarket.  Or the new breed of overweight “cyclist” who puts his mountain bike on the car to drive seven fucking miles to ride it on some trails and then loads it back on the roof rack to drive seven fucking miles back home again!

Or those twee types who before they set off leave the car engine running on cold mornings, adding to the excess carbon in the atmosphere and down our lungs.  

And yet still there is no indication from government – lost in their political fog of Brexshit - as to what might be done to avert the worst of this.

Oh, and get this.  They say they aim to cut greenhouse emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, conveniently leaving that task to others because they will be long dead and by which time Fairbourne has been given up to the sea! 

Meanwhile, life must go on.

Here's  some cycling news about the much anticipated World Road Championships

in Yorkshire in September.

Nice feature in Cycling Weekly (May 23 issue) entitled “Fans guide to the Yorkshire World’s.

It describes several rides of various lengths which Otley CC members regularly do, each one a route which takes you to vantage points to see the various world championship road races (Saturday 21^st to Sunday 29th September).

Take the train not the plane.

“There’s nowhere I can’t get to by bike, train or boat”

That was the heading on a double page feature in The Guardian telling how growing numbers of travellers are giving up flying and choosing more sustainable transport. Admittedly, not everyone can do this, but the point was being made that many can. Marginal gains, as a well-known cycling team boss would say.

One person went by train from Kiev to Moscow – it took our days.

There are some 15,000 Swedes who have signed a pledge not to fly and instead go by train.  Some 1000 Britons have signed up to a British  section of the same campaign.

Climate Strike Day

September 20 is World Climate Strike Day, when young people will again walk out of school to demand action on the climate crisis.  But this time, adults are wanted, too, says Greta Thunberg, the Swedish schoolgirl who inspired this movement and who has told politicians around the world they have failed to do anything worthwhile to stave off the worst of climate change. 

“Humanity is at a cross roads," she says.   "We need to decide which path to take.”

*HAVE YOU READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY?

SEA LEVELS to drown coastal areas; 

crops to fail, insects to die, we're to follow.

MAY ENDS IN JUNE

SUNDERLAND THRO TO CUP

ITALIAN LEADS GIRO

Apocalypse and politics alongside entertainment and the trivia of everyday life.

This is the “Climate Emergency”, as The Guardian now calls climate change, recognizing the need to ramp  up the aggro.

Scientists postulate that the countdown for the extinction of all life on earth will begin in 30 or so years from now, unless there is global action to curb the excesses of growth economics which has underpinned our way of death. It began with the Industrial Revolution spewing smoke into the atmosphere 200 years ago and has been exacerbated largely in ignorance by human carbon burning activities ever since.

In view of all this, I’d like to suggest that the looming chaos should be the major story in the media, spelling out what we must do to stave off the worst of it.

And governments should hold public information meetings in every town and city to brief everyone on the worst case scenario unfolding, empowering people with a strategy to get on top of this.

At the moment we’re sleep walking in the dark and the ongoing Extinction protests are designed to wake us up.

So far measures taken to reduce pollution have been woefully inadequate. In fact, major car manufacturers have increased the risk by conning the public into believing diesels were cleaner when they are spewing out more muck than petrol engines.

I feel that the extinction stories lose their gravitas as they compete for our attention with regional and national news, sport, entertainment.

I can hear the breakfast conversation. “I see were all going to be extinct.  Response: Oh, yes, bud did you read how Yates had a disastrous time trial in the Giro?

The extinction story needs a black border on the page and the headline: “We’re fucked.”

Many people remain in denial of course. I’d love for them to be right. But the scientific consensus seems pretty sound and very scary.

Roger Hallam, co-founder of the Radical Think Tank, the organiser of the Extinction Rebellion, galvanised support for the current protests going on around the country when he outlined the bleak current scientific thinking on man-made climate change.

Here’s the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgFc4Zhvjtg&t=68s 

When I listened to this my heart sank.

To summarise.  The loss of West Antarctica ice means the sun’s heat will no longer be reflected back into the space and instead by absorbed in the ground. So, as well the rise in sea levels, we can expect a huge rise in temperatures.

Lands in the equatorial regions will feel it first. When their crops die it will trigger a huge exodus - millions heading for comparatively cooler climbs.

i.e. That’s us. Here - Northern Europe including this off-shore island.

Meanwhile, holiday companies exhort us to burn more carbon by flying abroad in the pursuit of pleasure - to get away from it all.  If they could get us to the Moon I’d be tempted.

Here’s my random selection of recent headlines illustrating how the impact of the climate emergency stories are lost as they compete for attention alongside the usual fare.

In the best traditions of fake news I’ve made up a couple of them, in a bid to create a laugh with this otherwise crazy piece

 Headline stories of the week.

 POLITICS

Tory grey suits tell May time to go.

“May ends in June” – as The Daily Mirror headline put it.

SPORT

Italians on top in Giro, but Roglic remains poised to challenge for overall victory.

EXTINCTION

Loss of the West Antarctica ice sheet would raise global sea levels by 5 metres, drowning coastal cities around the world.

HOLIDAYS (advert)

Discover Norway’s beautiful coast in 12 day cruise...

At pre-sea rise prices starting at £1,249.

Team Sky lives on because the new sponsor’s name, IEONOS, just doesn’t roll off the tongue. But their dark coloured jerseys are inspirational because they are rendered invisible to the opposition.

HEALTH

 “No jab, no school” policy needed to curb measles.

POLLUTION

Fall in polluting cars entering London’s low emission zone, but millions still dying from toxic air.

BOLLOCKS

Cameron’s Brexshit (Excusing himself from creating Brexshit hell) book due in September.

INSECT numbers down at Chelsea Flower Show.

Brexshit Party ahead in EU election poll …

Brexshiter Nigel Farage - to cheers of “Ni-Gel, Ni-Gel”  at North of England rally - tells fellow drunks the EU can’t tell us what to do. If we want to have round chimney pots we shall have them.

ART

Titan works to be shown together for first time since 1704.

MORE POLITICS

Boris to bid for May’s job.  It’s no secret he wants to park his bike in No 10’s hallway.

British heavy metal put the “snot and piss” back into rock.

Film of the week: “Birds of Passion”.

The “Firm” opens at Hampstead Theatre.

SCARY

Bowel cancer on rise among younger people.

Police tear gas students in Brazil.

FAKERY

Trump pardons fraudster.

EXTRATERRESTERIAL

Vogons, from the planet Vogsphere (in Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) give notice that the Earth is to be destroyed to make way for an intergalactic bypass.

No one bothers to read the planning consents to register their objection and earth is duly destroyed in a less than a minute. The grandparents of today’s Brexshitters take refuge in a pub where they place paper bags over their heads.

Of course, in that story earth was restored. But that was fiction.

This isn’t.

*From A Day in the Life sung by John Lennon on the Beatles brilliant Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album.

REMEMBERING THE TALENTED MARK BELL

NO discussion about Merseyside – that one time hotbed of UK racing talent - would ever be complete without a mention of the late Mark Bell, photographed here by Phil O'Connor.

 The Olympian’s flashes of brilliance during the 1980s saw him win national road race titles as an amateur and as a professional. Sadly, tragically, Bell died 10 years ago, in January 2009, at the age of 48.

 The Kirkby CC and Mercury RC dominated Merseyside racing some 40 - 50 years ago, boasting that either one of them could field a full team to ride for GB internationally.

Merseyside produced riders with fierce reputations. Men like Doug Dailey, John Clewarth, Dave Lloyd, Dave Rollinson, Pete Matthews,  Ken Hill and the most talented by far, Joey McLoughlin, the most successful of them all, and of course Bell. He was never in the Kirkby or Merc, and neither were a host of other talented riders from other clubs who would give as good as they got.

Bell started cycling with the Birkenhead Victoria, moved to the Birkenhead North End CC, then to Prescot Eagle, Port Sunlight Wheelers and then on to Manchester Wheelers, a club which would rival the two top Liverpool clubs for the breadth of talented riders they could field.

Other good Merseyside amateurs of that era included several from the Liverpool Century whose coach was Geoff  Bewley. Two of these riders, Lloyd and Kevin Apter migrated to the big two – Lloyd to Kirkby and Apter who rode for both the Kirkby and Mercury. Then there were those who stayed, John Spencer, who won the Merseyside Division title, among other top races, Callum Gough and Dave Grindley.

Grindley went on to race in Belgium.

There were top women riders, too, such as time triallists Joan Kershaw and Pauline Strong. And from the Isle of Man (IOM) –  though part of the Merseyside Region the Isle of Man has always had its own distinct development programme– there was Marie Purvis, Queen of road racing during her time, plus a regular stream of top roadmen in the New Millennium.

They are of course the Tour de France sprint king Mark Cavendish and 2015 national road champion Paul Kennaugh, plus Birkenhead’s Steve Cummings.

But in the 1980s, another hugely talented Merseysider was making the news, Mark Bell, from Bebington, a stone’s throw from Birkenhead.

He had made an impression when he was still only 12 years old!

He had a good sprint, and earned his first international selection when still a schoolboy. In 1979 he gained his first senior international selection, for the Sealink International. Two years later he won the British amateur road race title at Colchester. He won two stages of the Milk Race. He turned heads abroad when he became the first foreigner to win the 8-day Etoile de Sud in Belgium.

Bell’s top British victories included the Archer GP International in Buckinghamshire, the Tour of Essex (ESSEX GP) in 1984 he won selection for the Los Angeles Olympic road race, but that was something he preferred to forget. Selected for his sprinting ability, too late it was discovered it was a seriously hilly and not suited to Bell at all.

You might as well have entered a Derby winner in the Grand National.

That episode left him bitter and afterwards he promptly turned pro, which he had delayed doing to race the Olympics.

As a pro Bell rode first for Falcon and then Raleigh. This was in 1980s, when Britain boasted an impressive home based pro class. Bell joined riders of the calibre of Yorkshire’s super sprinter Sid Barras and Keith Lambert, Stafford’s Phil Bayton,   Midlands stars Les West and Hugh Porter, and Colin Lewis who hailed from Wales but lived in Devon.

Despite the home pro calendar lacking a decent programme of long distance races, any Continental pro racing in Britain would be in for a hard time taking these guys on in criteriums, the staple diet the British pro class at the time.

In his first year with the pros Bell won the Delyn GP. But his greatest moment came in 1986 riding for Raleigh, when he won the British pro road title in Newport, Shropshire.

I recall saying at the time that if there was a best-dressed award Bell would win it. He was always clean cut and neat with bronzed limbs the product of his annual racing trip to New Zealand.

Bell delighted the Kiwis when in 1981, having just won the national road title; he went to New Zealand with mentor Phil Griffiths, the multi TT champion and a top roadman himself.  The New Zealanders said they’d seen nothing as fast as Bell since world pro sprint champion Reg Harris, in 1954.

Despite his flamboyant style, Bell wasn’t exactly chatty. He was reserved, serious, a bit broody, until you got to know him.

You had to persevere to dig out information.  Then suddenly he’d open  up with a line which told you everything, rattling out a colourful statement laced in Scouse black humour and always with a sting in the tale which would leave you laughing.

Then you might get a flicker of a smile before he resumed that deadpan expression.

If something had annoyed him and you got the flak, he invariably sought you out later to apologise. Sorry about that, he’d say.

I recall visiting him at his home on the Wirral, interviewing him for Cycling Weekly. We needed a photo and Bell decided we needed a prop. So he wheeled his racing bike out of the shed. It was in sparkling condition except for one thing. It was missing the chain!

What the hell, said Bell. Who needs a chain?

And he posed with the dismembered machine, trying to keep a straight face, one hand on the saddle the other on the handlebars.

Sadly, there was a dark side to the remarkable story of Mark Bell, who admitted being too fond of the beer.

And he eventually succumbed to alcoholism. Though he recovered, and had got back on his bike he had other serious health issues which knocked him back over the ensuing years. On one occasion he phoned me up for a chat. He told me he’d enjoyed his cycling so much he wanted to write about it and wondered if any publisher would be interested.   He wrote me a letter once, as well.

There was not a trace of self-pity in these exchanges, and his one-liners where as sharp as ever. He’d tell me how he was getting on, what he hoped for.  He longed to be well enough to get back into  cycling,  not racing, just to potter out in the lanes, perhaps to the Eureka café, a must stop for local  bikies heading for North Wales or direction Shropshire.

It came as a shock when he collapsed and died in January 2009, aged 48.

His older brother, Tony, also a racing man, said. “Mark needed an operation – it was coming up. He hoped it help him get out walking, help him to do a bit of more cycling. He had a new bike, and had been enjoying riding again.”

It was never to be.

Sheffield’s Malcolm Elliott, Milk Race winner, Tour de France rider, stage winner and green jersey victor in the Tour of Spain, had been quite close to Bell.

“On his day, Mark could do what he wanted,” Elliot told me. “We rode a couple of Milk Races together. Mark was a year or so older than me. I can recall he looked far and away better than the others. He just looked right on the bike, powerful, well-tanned. And the image – on his face there was never a hint of effort.”

THE DUTCH GLADIATOR

Le Tour shapshot 3:

My previous blog featured Paul Sherwen’s long and lonely struggle to finish the stage after crashing in the first kilometre.

The fate which befell my other Tour gladiator in that 1985 Tour, the Dutchman Adri Wijnands was of an entirely different order.

When he fell no one expected him to continue. He did, but with a shoulder so badly torn and bruised he could barely grip the handlebars. His right eye was half-closed from a head wound.

Each morning, Wijnands would have his wounds dressed by the team doctor. He would be helped into his Kwantum team jersey, pulled gently over the gauze wrapped around his head.

He could barely walk. But he could ride!

Wijnands had been expected to win a stage. He had done so twice before. He was a good sprinter in the single-day classics. He had finished fourth overall in the Tour of Holland.

But in 1985, he had not shown the same form and by the time of the Tour, team manager Jan Raas was putting pressure on Wijnands to deliver.

Yet from the start of the Tour in Brittany, across the north of France to the Belgian border, then into Switzerland and out into France again, Wijnands could make no impression.

He wasn’t to know that come stage 15, he would prove himself in an entirely different manner.

It was around midday. The field had covered 100 of the 237 kilometres from St Etienne to Aurillac, a transition stage between the Alps and Pyrenees.

This was the day after race leader Bernard Hinault’s spectacular crash in the St Etienne finish in which he broke his nose.  If Hinault was a hero for pressing on to land his fifth Tour victory, Wijnands deserved the title of Superman. 

Here’s how it happened.

The radio in our press car crackled into life:   “CHUTE… BRUTAL”.

It was on fast downhill corner. The radio announcement then promptly relayed the kilometre, rider number, followed by his name and team. We scribbled it all down.

Chute, Kilometre 100. Rider number 120:  Wijnands, Kwantum.

He was doing 72kph when his wheels slid from under him on diesel fuel spilt across a downhill corner.  Wijnands went skidding and tumbling down the road, parting company with his machine which bounced and crashed to a halt.

The race doctor’s car pulled up beside a crumpled, bloodied body and the mangled wreck of a bike.

The good news was that Wijnands had not broken any bones. The bad news was he had torn limbs and ripped flesh. If anyone looked DNF, this guy did. The ambulance stood by, doors opened wide.

Raas stood and watched as his man was treated for shock, his shoulder bandaged, grit cleaned from his head wound. Wijnands squinted through his right eye as it began to close and turn bluish black.

Tough man Raas, who had suffered serious falls himself during his distinguished career – 13 victories in the classics and 10 Tour stage victories – told Wijnands he didn’t expect him to continue.

But Wijnands, knowing that Raas was disappointed in him, shot him a look of defiance with his one good eye. “Give me a new bike. I will not give up,” he demanded.

The ambulance would not be needed!

Raas shrugged.  Wijnands would yet show his boss what he was made of.

And so began an extraordinary fight back.

He had 137 kilometres of the stage remaining – over two 4^th category climbs, one third category, then a real tough one, the second-category Col du Peyrol with just less than 50 kilometres to the finish.

The sight of this bloodied soul many minutes behind the rest shocked spectators. Momentarily struck dumb, they suddenly found voice and cheered him on.

Eventually, he found himself among a group of dropped riders, they probably caught him up, rather than he caught them.

 News travelled down the course.  On the final day’s climb up the 12-kilometre-mile drag of the Col du Peyrol, with blood now seeping through Wijnands dressings and sweat stinging his wounds, everyone at the roadside new what had happened. As he struggled to hold the wheels of the eight men at the back of the field, the crowds cried out:  “Courage, Wijnands, courage!”

He finished that day at the back of a large group, placed 133rd on the stage. Wijnands was lifted off his bike and supported by team helpers because he could barely stand. 

Each morning thereafter he would be lifted onto the bike. And after the stage, lifted off it.

He would endure six more stages to reach Paris.

When the race swung into the High Pyrenees two stages later – entering the Tour’s “Circle of Death” -  Wijnands hauled himself over the Col D’Aspin, followed by the Hors category and legendary giant, the 2,000 metre high Col du Tourmalet and finally, up the hors category climb to Luz-Ardiden. He finished 33 minutes behind the leaders.

The next day he faced a split stage Hell: ascending both the Col du Soulor and Col d’Aubisque in the morning stage, and then retracing back over both in the afternoon to finish in Pau.

Despite this ordeal, Wijnands wasn’t last on GC – but placed 103^rd  overall and ahead of 42 others who looked fit and healthy by comparison.

His spirits rose now, for the big mountains were behind them.

And so he defied the odds by making it to Paris where he had slipped a mere three more places to a final 106^th overall.  When you think about, it was crazy to force yourself on with injuries like that.

But this was Le Tour and common sense doesn’t come into it. For Wijnands, getting through was a matter of a pride.  In the absence of an expected stage win, this was a very personal victory.

Just popping down the road, back soon.

LE TOUR SNAPSHOTS 2: Sherwen's epic ride

The Tour de France is not just about the winners. There are other heroes.  Among them the domestiques. Men like the late Paul Sherwen.

 His unexpected and untimely death from a heart attack at the age of 62

 last December came as a great shock to all who knew him.

 Men like Sherwen are the backbone of a team. They are employed primarily to be of service of their team leader, to pace them back to the race after puncturing, to shield them from the wind, to mark rivals, burn themselves out in the lead-out train in the closing kilometres.  Except sometimes these guys  make the headlines.

Their suffering is often overlooked, but it provides another perspective on Le Tour, on the long and often dangerous journey around France, through the Alps and Pyrenees.

I have two stories about two such heroes from the 1985 Tour, about guys who crashed and against all the odds struggled on to finish.  One is about Sherwen as the Tour approached the Alps. The other is about Holland’s Adri Wijnands who several stages later crashed on the approach to the Pyrenees.

First, Sherwen.

In 1976, aged 19, Sherwen rode for Altrincham Road Club. He won Britain’s season-long Star Trophy series. His biggest successes included the National road title also the

 Manx International and the Archer Pernod GP plus two stages in the Tour of Malaga.

When he went to France he joined the Paris ACBB and scored a number of high profile amateur wins.

He turned professional in 1978 riding for Fiat under Raphaël Géminiani, before moving to the La Redoute team.

In 1982 he finished third in the Tour du Haut-Var, won by Sean Kelly. And also won a stage win in the season-opening Tour of the Mediterranean.

In 1983 he was second overall in the Four Days of Dunkirk, winning one stage.

In 1985 he had made the biggest headlines of his life with a heroic ride in the 1985 Tour, his last appearance in this greatest of races.

It was a feat recalled in the many tributes paid Sherwen.

Here’s is the report I filed at the time.

1985 Tour: Stage 10, Epinal to Pontarlier, 204.5km (127 miles)

This is a story about a heroic Englishman and an angry German whose troubles began at the start of this long, fast stage. The hero was Paul Sherwen, the angry German, Didi Thurau.

Their unrelated problems made the news on a day when there was no change to the top overall positions, despite seven climbs, with the toughest at the end, a second-category climb to the finish seven kilometres from the valley floor.

Sherwen, one of the most trusted and hard-working domestique in the business, crashed heavily in the first kilometre in Epinal. He hurt his back and was a few minutes on the ground before re-starting.

Because of the high speed set by race leader Bernard Hinault (La Vie Claire), determined to seal a famous fifth overall victory, the race fairly rushed the first two climbs, a third and fourth category, in the opening 20 kilometres.  The frantic pace doomed Sherwen to never regain the field.

He was so hurt that neither could he stay the pace with two La Redoute team-mates sent back to get him. It was a measure of the team’s regard for the Englishman that these two helpers were former world pursuit champion Alain Bondue and another rated Frenchman, Regis Simon.

The pair were forced to abandon Sherwen after 85 kilometres when it became clear that all three of them would finish outside of the time limit and be eliminated.

Save yourselves, Sherwen told them, a domestique to the last, always thinking of others.

And so Bondue and Simon rode Hell for leather to spare themselves from the clutches of the broom wagon.

At the finish we began formulating our day’s stories all the while waiting for Sherwen to arrive. When after an hour he still hadn’t shown, we began the drive back down the mountain road to the press room, when suddenly the evacuation halted.

A long, long time after Jorgen Pedersen (Carrera) had won the stage, the crowds and traffic blocking the descent off the mountain heard whistles shrill. They parted in waves as a lonely gendarme motard outrider appeared. And then the roadside crowds, making their way home, broke into spontaneous applause and cheers at the sight of the tortured vision winging towards them.  Cries “bravo Sherwen” rang out.

It was unbelievable, he was still riding: six hours chasing, most of it alone.

Like everyone else on the descent, our car pulled over to let him continue the five kilometres to the summit.

We’d all waited a long time hoping to see him finish and then left to get down to the press room, convinced he’d packed.

Not Sherwen.

We should have known better. Sherwen doesn’t give up easily, even when he must have known he would finish so far down he would be eliminated. According to the rules he should have been.

Wim Jeremiasse of Holland, a member of the International Jury, gave us reason to hope, saying: “He finished 23 minutes outside the time limit and the jury are deliberating because of the exceptional circumstances. It may be a good decision.”

A few minutes later, he returned to tell us: “Sherwen will not be disqualified. He can stay in the race. The points in his favour were that he crashed in the first kilometre, when the speed of the race was high. He was trying to the end, and his passage up the climb to the finish was blocked with traffic.”

Sherwen’s Director Sportif, Raphael Geminiani had waited like a father for a lost son on the finish line.

When the shattered, bedraggled Sherwen struggled across the line in a near state of collapse, Geminiani, the big Frenchman, a former star himself, threw his arms about Sherwen and in a show of emotion tore his ripped jersey off his back and helped him into a fresh one, saying: “Here, this is your very own Maillot Jaune.”

As for Didi Thurau, his fate also rested with the International Race Jury.

But for him there was only one possible decision. He was instantly disqualified from the Tour de France and fined 1,125 Francs.

The 30-year-old from Frankfurt, yellow jersey holder for 14 days in the 1977 Tour, had that morning assaulted an official!

Thurau has been upset from being docked a one-minute penalty in the time trial on stage 8, after slipstreaming France’s Charly Mottet who had caught and passed the German.

At the start of stage 10 he had asked the chairman of the jury, Raymond Trine of Belgium, why Mottet hadn’t been penalised as well, because Mottet had also taken turns pacing.

So far so good. But then it went pear-shaped for Thurau, because he then grabbed Trine by the throat and shook him, saying, it was alleged, “I will put you in hospital.”

At which point whistles blew for the start and riders mounted their bikes and everyone else bolted for the cars.

It wasn’t until after the stage finish that the commissaires were able to meet and apply Regulation 24: a fine and instant disqualification with no warning.

The rest of the stage details pale into insignificance compared to those two stories. But nevertheless, when we remind ourselves of the action at the head of the race, Sherwen’s epic chase looks all the more remarkable.

There was the attack by France’s Pascal Simon (Peugeot)

in pursuit of an eight-man break which had done clear after 138 kilometres and had gained over four minutes on the peloton by kilometre 160.

Simon’s move sparked a reaction from Hinault who upped the pace to eventually bring him back before he could reach the breakaway which stayed clear, albeit losing four men on the final climb.  The stage was won by Jorgen Pedersen of Denmark, while all the favourites finished in a 26-man chasing group. Besides Hinault, the other major contenders included Scotland’s Robert Millar, who in 1984 became the first Brit to win one of the three major overall titles in a grand tour, the mountains classification. He also finished fourth final overall, the highest placing by a Brit until Bradley Wiggins equalled this in 2009, before his history making overall victory in 2012.

And also in that elite group was Spain’s Pedro Delgado, winner of the Tour of Spain, who would win the Tour in 1988.

 And what of Sherwen?  He’d recovered by the following morning when the British press sought him out to congratulate him.

“You’re taking the Mickey,” he grinned. No we’re not, we said, and we presented him with a bottle of Champagne to prove it.

“Well, thanks very much guys,” he said, looking quite abashed.

“This is my last Tour and I didn’t want to finish by being eliminated.”

Then he quipped: “I thought I’d treat it as if I was riding a 12-hour!”

NEXT Blog: Wijnands 50mph crash.