Cycle festival returns after six years
Project GenesisA cycling festival event is to return to the calendar for the first time in six years.
Consett Cycle Festival attracted more than 10,000 people to the County Durham town in 2019, but the Covid pandemic put a stop to the event.
Organisers are now bringing the festival back on 22 June with a men's and women's Tour de Reservoir race starting and finishing in the town centre.
John O'Connor, who helps organise the event, said: "The people embraced it and it would've been a tragedy that we didn't repeat it, because it was so successful."
Mr O'Connor, chair of the Project Genesis Trust, said the festival aims to celebrate the resilience of the town and highlight it as a cycling hub.
The festival was set to return in 2020 and mark the 40th anniversary of the closure of Consett Steelworks.
"We wanted to paint a positive picture of how the town came back from that great impact," Mr O'Connor said.
"In 1980, the unemployment rate in the Consett area was over 40%.
"We wanted to try to put an event on that demonstrated how the resilience of the Consett people had fought back against that."
The pandemic meant it could not go ahead and British Cycling events need to be scheduled two years in advance, which contributed to the delay.
It is now hoped to repeat the festival in 2026 and 2027.