As the Union flags flutter in Paris at the end of the Tour de France for the second year in a row, in Yorkshire they're already working to put a British stamp on the 2014 event.
The Grand Depart, the opening stage of the world's biggest annual sporting event, will start in Leeds and end in Harrogate, taking in the spectacular scenery of the Yorkshire Dales National Park.
Half way along the route, in the newly-painted Black Bull pub on the village green in Reeth, landlady Kim Atkinson is nervous.
Every one of her nine bedrooms in a building dating back to 1680 was booked for the first weekend of July 2014 within 20 hours of the route being confirmed.
"Are we going to be able to cope?" she wondered, listing staff, beer and food supplies as her main worries in a village which has one road in and one road out.
But like other businesses on a route that will be inundated with cyclists, support teams, media and thousands of spectators, Kim know the tills will be busy.
Team Sky's Chris Froome with fellow competitors in this year's race "We will be prepared," she assured herself, "These are good things to worry about."
The Tour's organisers claim more than 5,000 hotel rooms are needed every night of the event for the teams, tour personnel and media alone.
On average, spectators travel 80 miles to stand at the roadside for more than six hours.
The crowds that will descend next year were hard to imagine as local cyclist Martin Derbyshire paused on a winding single track high on the hills above the village of Muker.
Having tackled part of the stage one route watched by skylarks calling overhead and sheep grazing in the sunshine, he wondered how the Tour's elite athletes will cope with Dales roads in high summer.
"They're melting at Middleham," he reported, "The roads are sticky."
Officials say Yorkshire's roads are up to the test. Pic: Bradley Ormesher But officials insist no-one expects a perfect race track and Yorkshire's roads will be good enough.
"The Tour de France is a road race, so competitors expect to ride on a surface that is in a normal condition," says the North Yorkshire County Council website.
"Roads are regularly inspected and are maintained in a safe and useable condition," it adds.
Despite melting roads, potential beer shortages and no room at the inn, at the Dales Bike Centre in the hamlet of Fremington, excitement is mounting.
Brenda Price proudly showed off her re-decorated red white and blue cafe, complete with one of the three hundred yellow-jersied toy sheep hidden around the Dales as part of a competition to drum up enthusiasm.
Next door, her husband Stuart can see the Tour de France course from his bike workshop and said he can't wait for July 5th 2014.
"It's difficult to imagine how many people are going to be here and the atmosphere it's going to bring," he pondered.
"It's just going to be amazing, absolutely amazing."
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