In life, you win some – you lose some, the same goes in Photography I guess and trying to photograph the ‘Tour of Britain’ certainly doesn’t go down as a win in my book.
The ‘Tour of Britain’ stage 2 starting point was in my home town of Clitheroe and journeyed around the Ribble Valley taking in ascents of Waddington Fell and Pendle Hill as part of the Queen of the Mountains.
In advance of the race, I studied the route and potential areas where I could photograph the riders. The initial intention was to try and photograph at two different spots but that soon became a non-reality as the logistics of getting from one place to another wouldn’t quite happen. In the end, I decided that I would photograph from halfway up Pendle Hill during the second ‘Queen of the Mountains’ stage. I parked up in a layby approximately an hour and a half before they were due to start and the weather was dreadful. Due to a crash elsewhere, the start was delayed by 30 minutes so that was a longer wait for me. The race eventually started and I tracked them using the Internet and as they approach the foot of Pendle Hill I moved from my car into the vantage point that I had chosen. Just as the riders approached a cattle grid at the foot of the hill a member of the motorcycle group running ahead of them slipped and crashed and stopped the race in its tracks. The riders were held up for 25 minutes or so and as a result their muscles cooled off and there was serious talk about the race being cancelled. Eventually they did restart but as they came past me they were one big group ambling up the hill just behind the lead car, all the cyclists were laughing, joking and smiling as they went past very slowly. The photography opportunity was gone and that was it. Four hours out and this was the only photograph of any interest, oh well.
