THE two Yorkshire stages of the Tour de France will include the county’s pensioners in homemade comedy vehicles.
Roughly a third of Yorkshire’s population are affable pensioners who accidentally travel using baths, desks, and Bessemer converters which have been repurposed as vehicles.
A spokesman for Visit Yorkshire said: “You can’t visit God’s Own County without witnessing a cloth cap-clad 76-year-old crashing a makeshift gyrocopter into a river, and we’re delighted the Tour is honouring that tradition.
Old men enjoying second childhoods should begin their contraptions now, in good time for them to lurch unexpectedly into life, taking them through the Tour and into a hedge to the mournful sound of a trombone.
Already entered into the Yorkshire legs of the Tour de France, officially called TTour, are a mine cart, a double-decker wheelchair, a tractor-tyre unicycle, a grandfather clock rocket sled and a Robin Reliant.
Tour director Christian Prudhomme said: We are keen to recognise local traditions in the Tour, even if they are very, very stupid.
Though none of these entrants will be allowed to take part in the subsequent Cambridge to London stage. This is a serious event, and for that section all the cyclists must be riding the regulation Sinclair C5.
