Staff and students at Selby College have enjoyed welcoming the Tour de Yorkshire this week.

Celebrations started the day before the Tour came to town, with a sponsored ‘wear blue and yellow’ day at the College, to raise vital funds for this year’s official Tour de Yorkshire charity, Help for Heroes.

The fun continued on the day of the race with a ‘Tour de Campus’ at College in the morning, which saw staff and students whizzing around the campus on fun bikes, which proved the perfect way to warm up for the arrival of the official race in the afternoon.

After covering the town's Tour de Yorkshire celebrations for Selby District Council back in 2015, six of our A Level Photography students and Paul Belshaw, Subject Area Manager for Art, Design & Media, were invited to again spend the day photographing the event. They braved the weather to get some amazing shots of the crowd scenes and community involvement across Selby.

Selby College was very much part of the afternoon’s action with a stand in the Micklegate Fan Zone, where visitors were offered a go on a paint-spinning bike to take away their very own creations, which proved very popular with all ages! Each participant was asked for a small donation, which again helped to top-up the Help for Heroes bucket.

The College also continued its glory from winning the Drax Greenpower Electric Car Race at the weekend, with our winning Engineering team leading the parade down Gowthorpe before the racers arrived. Barwic Parade CP School’s ‘Bolt the Bear’ car also featured in the parade, which College students really enjoyed helping the primary students put together. Both cars were then displayed proudly in Selby Abbey, with the rest of the race vehicles, for the remainder of the afternoon.

Phil Sayles, Principal at Selby College, said: “We were absolutely delighted to be involved with the Tour de Yorkshire celebrations, as the main education provider for the community. It was great to see so many happy faces enjoying our paint-spinning bike and taking away their own creations, the perfect souvenir from a fantastic day for Selby! One of our key aims as a College is to get out into the community to help people across the district enhance their skillset and build rewarding careers with our support, so it was great to meet people on the day asking for our help with their next steps.”