THE Tour 21, an incredible endurance challenge which sees a group of amateur riders tackle the entire route of the Tour de France just one week ahead of the professionals.

It's now concluded as the riders arrived into the final week of the Tour de France route having raised over £787,000 of the £1-million target for the Cure Leukaemia charity.

The team, including local riders Alastair Kennedy, Leeds, and Douglas Robertson, Skipton, joined sixteen other riders and rolled out of Copenhagen on stage one back on Friday 24 June, soaking up the atmosphere of the soon-to-arrive Tour de France which had already decorated the city.

Three stages in Denmark got the challenge underway before a rest day and transfer back to France where the ride continued with a series of flat stages which included the brutal cobblestones of northern France and the infamous Paris Roubaix - the scene of chaos on stage five of the Tour de France just one week later.

The mountains got underway on stage seven with a steep finish atop La Planche des Belles Filles setting the tone for a succession of tough hilly and mountainous days in the saddle, broken up by the second rest day of the event, before heading into the Alps.

The infamous Alpe d’Huez was just one of many mountain climbs to conquer for The Tour 21 riders. Over the course of 48 hours last week, the team cycled up over 8,500m of elevation - the equivalent of 26 Eiffel Towers or 1,954 double-decker buses stacked on top of each other.

The second half of The Tour 21 presented plenty more challenges for the 17 remaining riders, each of whom have their own reasons for riding. The stages included some tough tests in the Pyrenees before the group eventually rolled into Paris on Sunday 17 July.

You can donate to The Tour 21’s fundraising efforts on the event’s Just Giving page.