Rob McIvor, author, interview: “A whole kind of carnival on wheels"

As the 2026 Tour of Britain Women prepares to descend on the Ribble Valley, a Lancashire-raised author has blended elements of cycling and mystery together to create the perfect novel, based in Clitheroe and inspired by the world-class cycling coming to the area.

The novel follows the story of Harry Chatham, who is on the brink of becoming the first British winner of the Tour De France when a crash on a twisting mountain descent ends his life and consigns him to a footnote in sporting history. Decades later, Harry’s son, Jim, sets out to uncover who his father really was and ultimately draws Jim into the darker side of 1970s professional cycling, where he uncovers a shocking truth that has been concealed for nearly forty years.

The writer - Rob McIvor, who was raised in Ormskirk, set the UK chapters in and around Clitheroe, principally because the surrounding Bowland and Ribble Valley regions – with hill climbs such as the Nick O’Pendle or the Trough of Bowland – are hugely popular amongst the road cycling community. As an experienced cyclist, McIvor has completed the prestigious Paris-Brest to Paris and the London to Edinburgh to London endurance events several times. He also rode around the town’s surrounding areas with regularity when he was younger, influencing the decision to centre the UK element of the book in Clitheroe, but it wasn’t the sole reason.

“To be honest, the reason it ended up being Clitheroe as opposed to say Blackburn, Burnley or Preston was simply when I came up with the idea of having the Harry and his cycling partner Mike becoming kind of a two-headed beast winning races all over the country and then eventually going over to Europe and becoming professionals. I just had this idea of the Clitheroe kids,” he explained.

“I was thinking of Jimmy Clitheroe, obviously, which older readers will remember. And I just thought, yes, if you had these two guys who were making a name for themselves, the press would be bound to call them the Clitheroe kids. And then after that, it just became Clitheroe was the town I chose, but it could have been anywhere, really. But I wanted to use that setting of having the lumpy parts of kind of mid-Lancashire around Lockbridge, Winterhill, Pendle, that area,” McIvor concluded.

In a loose way, the 2026 Tour of Britain Women marks a dress rehearsal for the Ribble Valley. July 3, 2027, will mark the first time the men's Tour de France race route passes through the Ribble Valley, making the timing of McIvor’s novel all the more perfect. McIvor has previously stated that if any of his readers read the novel, get into cycling and want to see the Tour De France in-person, it makes it a win-win for him.

“I mean, it was one of the moments when I saw the route announced a couple of months ago, I kind of thought, somebody there's been reading my book before it's been published,” he joked. “The section in Lancashire is perfect. They're going up from Lancaster by the Jubilee Tower. And in the book, that's where Harry first races against the man who's going to become his kind of racing partner for life, Mike.

“And then of course, later on, they're going down to Leyland Way and they're going over what they call the Col de Parbold, which is Parbold Hill, you know, which they won't notice. I mean, they probably won't even change gear to go over it. But when I was a kid, that was kind of the first big slog on the way out of Ormskirk. So I think the roads from the Lake District right the way down to Liverpool are going to be absolutely packed with people watching it. It's such a fantastic thing to see when the tour comes through. It's not just a bike race; it's a whole kind of carnival on wheels,” McIvor finished.