Not only will the 2014 Tour de France begin in Yorkshire, with subsequent days including Cambridgeshire and London, it has now been announced that next year’s Giro d’Italia will begin in Belfast with three days of action (May 10-12) spanning the border to take in Armagh and Dublin. Official announcements have been made in Dublin’s Civic Offices and at the Titanic Belfast exhibition space and with a suggested global audience for the Giro topping 775million it’s easy to see why tourism officials are celebrating despite the rumoured £4m price tag attached to staging the action. Exact details of the routes have yet to be made public, but with two of the three Grand Tours heading our way, Cyclo can’t help feeling that perhaps somewhere like the flatlands of Essex should bid for a stage of the Vuelta a España…