Strade del Vescovo: a National B road race takes to the gravel
The Yomp Bonk Crew's newest event threads gravel sectors through a National B road race near Selby on 26 September: a Yorkshire answer to Strade Bianche, and, as it stands, the season's final date.
New races are rare. Genuinely novel ones are rarer still. The Strade del Vescovo is both. On Saturday 26 September, the Yomp Bonk Crew will run the open and women’s fields over the Bishops Wood circuit near Selby for a road race with gravel sectors threaded through it—a Yorkshire answer to Strade Bianche, a rare attempt to bring this kind of mixed-surface road racing into the British domestic calendar.
The idea is simple. The race opens on the long-standing Bishops Wood circuit—pan-flat, familiar to local riders, its only real rise the climb over a railway bridge—before breaking onto the gravel. The rough roads arrive once the race has had an hour or so to settle, and from there they return lap after lap, on forestry tracks normally closed to racing and opened for the day by special permission. The surface is its own thing: not the cobbles of northern Europe, but something lower and looser. “It’s a Strade Bianche-esque event,” explains organiser Tom Hutchison. “It’s not Paris-Roubaix cobbles—it’s sandstone, basically a rock road with pine dust on it, more than anything.”
The name rewards a second look. Strade Bianche means “white roads”, for the pale Tuscan gravel; Strade del Vescovo means “roads of the bishop”—named not for the surface but for the place, Bishops Wood. The colour fits all the same: where the Italians have their white roads, this race has the grey.
We wanted to give riders who aren’t at UCI level a chance to race off-road
The inspiration, Hutchison says, was “having something different on the calendar.” Britain’s one comparable race is the CiCLE Classic, a road race long defined by its stretches of rough, unsurfaced track — but it sits at UCI level for the men’s peloton, National A for the women, and its sectors can be a hard place to learn the craft. He wanted a more accessible route into that kind of racing: not necessarily easier, but available to riders below UCI level: “We wanted to give riders who aren’t at UCI level a chance to race off-road.”
His models are continental — the kermesses and Dutch national-series rounds that send the bunch over cobbles and gravel as a matter of course. He points to a Dutch national-series round near Assen: “a short course with 16km of pavé and 5km of gravel, pan-flat,” which the British team O’Shea rode last year. “One of the most enjoyable races we go to,” he says — the kind of racing British riders cross the Channel to find and rarely have at home.
Image: Milan Josy/The British Continental
The late-September slot is deliberate. As it stands, the race sits last on the domestic calendar, and the organisers have pitched it to suit—a send-off for the road season that runs straight into the start of cyclo-cross. “It leads naturally into the cross season,” Hutchison says. “It should act as a season finale for the road.” For anyone still carrying form, it offers one more result before the year is out.
It should act as a season finale for the road
The practicalities are settling into place. Both races carry National B status. As entered with British Cycling, the open race runs to 14 laps and 120 kilometres, rolling out at 10:30; the women’s race follows at 15:00 over 10 laps and 86 kilometres. The organisers’ advice on the British Cycling entry page is blunt: leave the light tyres at home. Entries are open now, first come, first served.
Hutchison stresses that access is a privilege, not a fixture. The race runs on the forest tracks by permission rather than by right, and he is keen that riders treat them accordingly. Damage the forest, or alienate those who use it for the rest of the year, and the first edition could also be the last.
Team cars are allowed in the convoy and there is a tidy incentive for clubs and crews: ride marshal duty in one race and take money off your entry to the other.
That eye for detail is in keeping with the people behind it. The Yomp Bonk Crew — named The British Continental’s 2025 Outstanding Contribution to Domestic Road Racing winners — began as a handful of Sheffield teenagers and have grown into one of the most prolific promoting outfits in the country, working to a principle as plain as it is rare: if you want more racing, organise more racing.
Their early-season Peaks 2 Day is now a calendar fixture. As is the Ronde van Wymeswold. Building something genuinely new on top of that — negotiating access to a working forest and writing a risk assessment for a format British Cycling did not previously have — is the kind of unglamorous work the domestic scene should not take for granted.
New races are rare. Genuinely novel ones are rarer still. The Strade del Vescovo is both. On Saturday 26 September, the Yomp Bonk Crew will run the open and women’s fields over the Bishops Wood circuit near Selby for a road race with gravel sectors threaded through it—a Yorkshire answer to Strade Bianche, a rare attempt to bring this kind of mixed-surface road racing into the British domestic calendar.
The idea is simple. The race opens on the long-standing Bishops Wood circuit—pan-flat, familiar to local riders, its only real rise the climb over a railway bridge—before breaking onto the gravel. The rough roads arrive once the race has had an hour or so to settle, and from there they return lap after lap, on forestry tracks normally closed to racing and opened for the day by special permission. The surface is its own thing: not the cobbles of northern Europe, but something lower and looser. “It’s a Strade Bianche-esque event,” explains organiser Tom Hutchison. “It’s not Paris-Roubaix cobbles—it’s sandstone, basically a rock road with pine dust on it, more than anything.”
The name rewards a second look. Strade Bianche means “white roads”, for the pale Tuscan gravel; Strade del Vescovo means “roads of the bishop”—named not for the surface but for the place, Bishops Wood. The colour fits all the same: where the Italians have their white roads, this race has the grey.
The inspiration, Hutchison says, was “having something different on the calendar.” Britain’s one comparable race is the CiCLE Classic, a road race long defined by its stretches of rough, unsurfaced track — but it sits at UCI level for the men’s peloton, National A for the women, and its sectors can be a hard place to learn the craft. He wanted a more accessible route into that kind of racing: not necessarily easier, but available to riders below UCI level: “We wanted to give riders who aren’t at UCI level a chance to race off-road.”
His models are continental — the kermesses and Dutch national-series rounds that send the bunch over cobbles and gravel as a matter of course. He points to a Dutch national-series round near Assen: “a short course with 16km of pavé and 5km of gravel, pan-flat,” which the British team O’Shea rode last year. “One of the most enjoyable races we go to,” he says — the kind of racing British riders cross the Channel to find and rarely have at home.
The late-September slot is deliberate. As it stands, the race sits last on the domestic calendar, and the organisers have pitched it to suit—a send-off for the road season that runs straight into the start of cyclo-cross. “It leads naturally into the cross season,” Hutchison says. “It should act as a season finale for the road.” For anyone still carrying form, it offers one more result before the year is out.
The practicalities are settling into place. Both races carry National B status. As entered with British Cycling, the open race runs to 14 laps and 120 kilometres, rolling out at 10:30; the women’s race follows at 15:00 over 10 laps and 86 kilometres. The organisers’ advice on the British Cycling entry page is blunt: leave the light tyres at home. Entries are open now, first come, first served.
Hutchison stresses that access is a privilege, not a fixture. The race runs on the forest tracks by permission rather than by right, and he is keen that riders treat them accordingly. Damage the forest, or alienate those who use it for the rest of the year, and the first edition could also be the last.
Team cars are allowed in the convoy and there is a tidy incentive for clubs and crews: ride marshal duty in one race and take money off your entry to the other.
That eye for detail is in keeping with the people behind it. The Yomp Bonk Crew — named The British Continental’s 2025 Outstanding Contribution to Domestic Road Racing winners — began as a handful of Sheffield teenagers and have grown into one of the most prolific promoting outfits in the country, working to a principle as plain as it is rare: if you want more racing, organise more racing.
Their early-season Peaks 2 Day is now a calendar fixture. As is the Ronde van Wymeswold. Building something genuinely new on top of that — negotiating access to a working forest and writing a risk assessment for a format British Cycling did not previously have — is the kind of unglamorous work the domestic scene should not take for granted.
Enter the race here.
Featured image: Milan Josy/The British Continental
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