THE Tour De France revealed the grandeur of the Yorkshire Dales as never before. I think especially of the sunlit views in a spectacular route taken by hundreds of cyclists as they crossed our district. The massed competitors, crowds of spectators and views of a glorious landscape were transmitted to millions of spectators via film shot from the ITV helicopter.

I was thrilled to be able to peer down on a host of familiar features. I remember in particular glancing at the rooftops of Skipton Castle in their glorious setting. Sunlight and clear air had ensured that we would see the landscape at its best.

Among the roadside spectators were folk sitting on bales of straw. I was amused when two great-grandchildren, having excitedly watched the the Tour De France as it passed through Skipton, spent the following few hours biking in the family garden.

Cycling through the Dales was a novelty in 1882. Cyclists were uncommon and, when seen, were objects of awe and wonder. Herbert Waddington recorded an old-time cycling run from Skipton to Malham. When three cyclists left the city of Leeds early one August morning their object was to discover the source of the River Aire. Two of the men rode “safeties” and the third operated a tricycle.

Mechanically, they had graduated from cycles with iron-rimmed wooden wheels – boneshakers - to solid rubber tyres.

The trio pedalled via a bustling Skipton, the state of disorder being derived from the fact that the annual agricultural show had been held the previous day. The cyclists left the main road at Gargrave and, pausing for a short time at Kirkby Malham, looked in the church for curiosities, one of which was the signature of Oliver Cromwell.

The old-time tour included a view of Gordale Scar. Returning to Malhamdale, they spent a little time at Janet’s Foss, saw the infant Aire, had cups of tea in a garden near Malham Bridge, then returned to Leeds by the same route. They had cycled seventy-eight miles.

Rough-riding cyclists stormed the Three Peaks – Ingleborough, Whernside and Penyghent – on October 1, 1961. It was the first annual Three Peaks Cyclo Cross – one lap of 25 miles - organised by the Bradford Racing Cycling Club. Two members of the club, Harry Bond and John Rawnsley, went over the course in May, completing it in three hours 54 minutes. In the 1970s, John, a prime cyclist who became a great friend of mine, completed the Pennine Way – Britain’s longest continuous footpath – in less than three days.

In the 1880s, a West Yorkshire lad who propelled himself to school on a penny-farthing bicycle had to cover about two miles from his home. For two years he welcomed this alternative to walking. His velocipede – a three-quarter-size bicycle – had been handed down in the family. There was no-one to take it on so it was sold for ten shillings.

Halliwell Sutcliffe, novelist with a fondness of the Yorkshire Dales, moved to a fine house at Linton-in-Craven in 1907. To Sutcliffe, the dale-country was steeped in romance. When he was not tending his rock garden, he donned Norfolk jacket and breeches for an excursion on foot or bicycle into the remote corners of his Promised Landscape. He had no use for a car. A bike was fast enough. Such exercise kept him lean and wiry.

At a funeral service in Burnsall church, Alfred J Brown described Halliwell Sutcliffe was a genuine dalesman. He numbered him among “a very small number of scholar-gipsies who forsook the towns and gave himself, body and soul to the peace of the hills.” Whenever he took his bicycle along moorland tracks, peace remained. There was no motor to rouse the echoes – or startle the grouse.

The Tour De France will remain in the memories of Dales folk if only for the glorious, sunlit dale-country through which a mass of cyclists pedalled – and for televised views from the roofs of buildings we normally only see in profile. There was an appropriate patch of Tour De France yellow on the castellated tower of Skipton Parish Church.