Over the weekend the world’s biggest bike race hit Yorkshire for Le Grande Depart. Excitement and preparations for this great event has been building for months, with many towns and cities across the county getting involved.

For many of you not familiar with Le Tour de France, it’s a competitive bike race that takes place in France throughout July. The Le Grande Depart stage of the race always starts in a different country and this year the UK, and the county of Yorkshire was it’s destination. The winner of the tour receives the prestigious yellow jersey, hence the very yellow theme throughout my photos.

Bunting was raised, flags were flown, and yellow flowers were planted throughout the area. Many towns and villages painted bikes yellow and placed them in random places, including 30 feet up in the air on an industrial crane.

These are just a few photo’s from a the small village I work in, and the tour didn’t even pass through, but it’s a great example of how everyone got into the spirit of things, bringing friends and family together.

As a fan of Le Tour de France I was more than a little excited to find out that Stage 1 of the tour passed through a small town close to me. So as Saturday came around I was up and ready very early to find the best spot to watch the cyclists pass by. (OK, I may have waited for 3 hours, but hey, it’s not everyday Le Tour comes to town).

Before the race itself there are publicity floats or Le Caravane, that pass through. These are the sponsors of the race and some of the designs were quite random – even for me.

Finally the cyclists followed. What a sight it was to see they cycle past so quick, followed by an army of support vehicles. To get the best photos I had my finger constantly pressed on the shutter and a lot of my photo’s were blurred, here are the best photos from Le Tour.

I’m now looking forward to watching the rest of the tour on TV.