YOU might have thought it would be just too much of a tough act to follow to come up with anything that could match the excitement of last year’s Grand Depart of the Tour de France in Yorkshire.

To suggest that another cycle race would be the right event to run through the White Rose county for 2015 might also seem to be pushing one’s luck a little too far.

However, one only had to be out and about on the streets of South Craven on Sunday to see that the enthusiasm for major two-wheeled events in the area remains red hot.

This was true even though this time the big race - the Tour de Yorkshire - was only really passing through a corner of Craven, essentially Sutton, Cross Hills, Kildwick, Silsden and Addingham.

But it didn’t seem to matter to the cheering crowds who met both the ‘sportive’ and the bigger-name cyclists as they passed through on their way from their Wakefield starting point to the big finish in Leeds.

Welcome to Yorkshire has estimated that 1.2 million people turned out to watch the full three days of the inaugural event. It is extremely difficult at this stage to translate that figure into economic or other benefits for Craven, but the positive feelings for the race appear obvious.

There also seems little doubt that the number of cyclists using the district has gone up appreciably since the 2014 Grand Depart.

And the excitement is far from over, as a town centre cycle race, the Skipton Criterium, is due to take place in July. Sunday’s success suggests it too will prove a popular addition to the Craven calendar.