Lancaster

Lancaster is where Stage 2 stops being a coastal run and becomes a bike race. The official announcement puts the Côte de Jubilee Tower, on the moors east of the city, as the first categorised climb of the day, with five climbs in all counting towards the King of the Mountains competition before the descent towards Merseyside.

That makes the city an unusually good base rather than an unusually good viewing spot. You can be at the foot of the first climb in minutes, you have a choice of hotels and guest houses instead of the handful of rooms available up on the fells, and if the weather turns there is a thousand years of castle, a quay and the domed Ashton Memorial in Williamson Park to fall back on.

There is a second, older connection worth knowing. The Trough of Bowland, where the council says a King of the Mountains ascent will fall, is the most direct road between Lancaster and Dunsop Bridge, and so on to Clitheroe. It is the road the Pendle witches were taken along to their trial at Lancaster Castle in 1612. The race will cover in an afternoon a route that once took days.