Editor’s Pick of the Week: Tour of Britain provides pie boost in Pateley

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Watching the Tour of Britain cyclists glide through Pateley Bridge last Saturday was thrilling.

It was, however, hard to detect much of a tourism boost to justify the £750,000 cost of staging the Helmsley to Leyburn stage.

Perhaps the lush aerial views of North Yorkshire on ITV hooked a few in but the biggest evidence of an economic benefit on the day were the queues for pies at Pateley’s two butchers — not quite the hoped-for legacy of an event that’s supposed to encourage us to get fit.

Good news in Ripon, where the Ford Fiesta submerged in the River Ure since Christmas Eve last year has finally been removed. 

After months of saying ‘nowt to do with me, guv’, North Yorkshire Council and the Environment Agency agreed to fund a recovery operation. 

Storing cars in rivers is perhaps one way of making the streets safer for cycling.

You can always rely on Ripon City Council, however, to shatter the harmonious mood.

Feuding returned this week when the controlling group censured a rival councillor and then rejected her motion to set up a climate working group. Old wounds seem too deep to heal before next May’s council elections, which may herald a fresh start.

By contrast, Studley Royal Cricket Club has been feeling the love as people rally to replace its deer park pavilion that burned down at the end of last month.

A fundraising campaign topped £10,000 and four ex-England cricketers, including Ashes winning skipper Michael Vaughan, pledged to help. Will they follow through?

Former MP and cricket fan Andrew Jones has returned to the political fray by becoming chair of Harrogate and Knaresborough Conservative Party.

The local political map has turned yellow since his days in Westminster.

Harrogate and Knaresborough both have Liberal Democrat town councils, a Lib Dem MP and a Lib Dem majority on North Yorkshire Council’s area committee. 

Can Mr Jones knock it out the park, or will he prove as ineffective as the Pakistan cricket team?

Labour mayor David Skaith, another cricket lover, was flogging trousers in York when Mr Jones was an MP.

But he showed his growing political acumen this week in his bid to introduce a tourist tax. 

With support for his plans thin on the ground, he pulled the old stunt of commissioning a report which, surprise surprise, supported his view that an overnight accommodation charge would be terrific. 

Expect a similar report to reach an equally favourable conclusion about the value of hosting the Tour of Britain at some point soon. The butchers, at least, might approve.