Tom Simpson Retro Cycling Festival 2024
Friday 16th, Saturday 17th & Sunday 18th August 2024
Start times:
Friday evening dinner with guest speaker and social from 6pm (eat at 7pm).
All-day Saturday Cycling Festival, various events from 9am onwards.
Retro bike ride starts at 10am on Sunday, with Best in Show prize presentations after.
The Tom Simpson Retro Cycling Festival is the fastest growing retro cycling event in the UK. It’s a fabulous weekend of joy, smiles, friendship and beautiful bikes. Now in its fourth year everybody who takes part agrees, this is an event not to be missed and it’s still evolving, still growing. The Simpson Retro will be better than ever in 2024.
The event HQ is Harworth and Bircotes Town Hall, Scrooby Road, Harworth, DN11 8JN, where the weekend kicks off on Friday evening with a dinner and social event. We tried this for the first time in 2023 and it was a great success, with tickets selling out long before the day. There will be a celebrity speaker this year, we’ve got fantastic caterers, even better than we had in 2023, and we’ve made more tickets available. Book them using the entry link at the bottom of this page where it says ‘click here to enter’, but do so early to avoid disappointment.
Saturday kicks off at 9am with our all-day cyclist’s market, which is located just outside the Town Hall in our custom-constructed market place. There’s a cycle jumble corner, trade stands with various sellers offering some fabulous stuff; some of our sponsors have stands, and there is plenty of hot and cold food and drink available for when you get peckish.
New to this year’s Simpson Retro is an informal Saturday morning bike ride led by our ride food sponsor, Austin Fawcett of Moore’s Bakery. The ride leaves from the Town Hall car park at 10am on Saturday for a short spin around local lanes, with a café stop. It will return in good time for the afternoon’s entertainment.
That starts shortly before mid-day with the opening of our amazing race-winning retro bike display inside Harworth and Bircotes Town Hall. This display changes every year and we’ve got some incredible bikes coming in 2024, including some ridden to victory by the greatest of all time, Eddy Merckx. You will be amazed at the beautiful history-making machines on show, and they are there all afternoon while everything else is going on inside the Town Hall.
There are films in the Hall, and of course a feature the Simpson Retro has become famous for; some of the biggest names in cycling will come on the stage and share stories with us from their fabulous racing careers. We had Les West, Denise Burton, Sid Barras, Keith Lambert and Dean and Russell Downing last year, and there will be a whole load of new names this year. Details to be released over the coming months.
Our Retro Ride is on Sunday, starting from the Town Hall Car Park at 10am. Entry for Sunday’s ride also includes admission for the ride participant and an accompanying person to all of Saturday’s events inside the Town Hall. The Friday evening dinner and social is an extra option, which you book as a separate item on the entry page. ‘Click here to enter’ at the bottom of this page to access all tickets. There is a non-ride ticket option if you want to come to the Cycling Festival events in the town hall only. Please note dinner tickets are ‘per head’ i.e. one ticket per person.
Once on the entry page you will see another new addition for this year, a Tom Simpson Retro 2024 T-shirt to celebrate the event. These are designed and supplied by one of our sponsors, Prendas Ciclisimo and are available to order from them by using the link on the entry page (access at bottom of this page). It’s best to order T-shirts after you have bought your ticket(s) to the event, because the link takes you to Prendas’s website to order your T-shirt(s).
The Tom Simpson Retro Cycling Festival is organised by the Simpson Cycling Club and Cycling Legends Events, with any profit going to the Tom Simpson Memorial Fund, which as well as caring for Tom’s various memorial stones, awards cash grants to young cyclists living in the South Yorkshire, North Nottinghamshire and North Derbyshire region. Previous recipients include Ben Turner, who now races in the World Tour for the INEOS-Grenadiers team, George Wood and James Hawkins who are making great progress with the Cycling Sheffield elite team, and the multi-British BMX champion Ava Brown.
Sunday’s Retro Ride starts and finishes outside Harworth & Bircotes Town Hall. There will be food and other refreshments stalls on site on both days. There is free water and food for riders at the start of the Retro Ride, and a food station with water and cakes at around the halfway point (a bit over halfway for the middle-distance ride). Denise Burton and Russell Downing joined in with everybody on the ride last year, and they will do the same this year, as will some of our other pro guests from 2023.
Tom Simpson grew up in Harworth and started cycling here. The route runs through quiet pastoral countryside on roads Tom used for his early training rides. These roads were where he discovered his ambition to become a world class professional cyclist, and where he first raced.
The Retro Ride offers two distances to choose from; the 55-kilometre middle-distance and the 84-kilometre longer ride. They both explore the quiet lanes of North Nottinghamshire, with short dips into North Lincolnshire and South Yorkshire. The routes are mostly flat, with some rolling sections and one short steep(ish) climb early on. The two routes share most of the same roads, with the middle-distance only missing the northern section of the longer route. You can choose which route you ride on the day. We’ve also added some interesting optional marked loops this year, if you want to ride a bit further.
Our Best in Show competition takes place during and after the Retro Ride, with judging by experienced show judge and our trophy sponsor Bill Barrowcliff, who does a tremendous job supplying all the trophies for us; we are greatly indebted to him. All awards will be presented at the end of the ride.
There will be updates on this page and going out via newsletter email to entrants and former participants throughout the coming months…….. Please come and join us for the 2024 Tom Simpson Retro Cycling, you will love it.; we promise!!!!!!!!
Entry to the event is subject to Terms and Conditions.
Entries are now closed
All photos courtesy of Andy Jones