Location: Bath to Hemel Hempstead
Distance: 206km
The stage starts in the city of Bath, in the shadow of the Royal Crescent. The riders will do a loop of the city before heading out to cross five counties. The bleak, barren and seemingly endless scope of Salisbury Plain will test the riders’ mental capabilities as well as their physical ones, and all three KoMs arrive in the second half of the stage in Buckinghamshire’s Chiltern Hills, including a searching climb of Chinnor Hill. The fast and flat finish runs adjacent to Hemel Hempstead’s Gadebridge Park and its famous Roman Villa, giving a historical, Roman-age feel to the beginning and the end of this trek across a large chunk of southern England.
Best place to watch
With the riders doing a loop at the start, and the city being surrounded by hills, Bath is a great place to soak everything up and see a decent chunk of the action from various vantage points.
