the tour de France is coming to edinburgh in 2027!

Edinburgh will officially host the Grand Départ of the 2027 Tour de France, with the opening stage starting in Scotland's capital on July 2, 2027, and finishing in Carlisle.

Tour De France Cyclists in action

This marks the first time both the men's and women's races start in the same country outside France, highlighting a major UK-wide event.

With that in mind and the recent release of dates for the Tour De France in 2027, I've been giving my niche cycling gifts and decor some serious thought.

These have always been very popular with cyclists and fans the length and breadth of the country and worldwide.

It's also quite key that when Bradley Wiggins won in 2012, cycling became huge is the uk and it hit a trend in many households, ours included.

My hUsband bEcame an avid MAMIL -trading in his running shoes for next best bit of rapha kit. this happily coincided with me starting up a small homemade kitchen table business at the time in 2013.

I was busy making bunting, but the generic bunting in the usual hessian colours with lovehearts etc and then my husband happened to be walking past me one afternoon and he suggested I make them yellow and create tour de france themed bunting.

Brilliant idea I thought! So Off I went.

The Original Tour De France Bunting I made from 2013

This also happened to coincide with the launch and announcement of the Tour De Yorkshire in 2014, so I also designed a set of bunting for this event.

Tour De Yorkshire bunting 2014

I can remember it clearly, I listed them on ebay and within two hours, i had already sold my first set. I was Pretty chuffed.

However we went away for the weekend to visit my uni friends and all weekend my phone did not stop buzzing with sales. It was amazing but then of course I had the headache of getting them all made and out to people on time!

Soft Int 'Ed pennants being printed

At the time, I only had a PC, my sewing machine, a vague knowledge of printing from university, my paintbrushes and my scissors.

I made hand cut card stencils for each pennant and stamps the ink through to achieve the slogans.

I had to hand paint each yorkshire rose although I did make a card flower base templatE so that i could stamp through white paint before painting to make the colours clearer. Each set would probably take me a couple of hours each so it actually worked in my favour to get a big bunch of orders and get a production line going.

I must have sold a total of 500 sets over a two month period. They were popular all over yorkshire, in private houses, in cafes, in chip shops, the whole county was really geared up and ready for this exciting event - it was amazing.

With that in mind, I am really excited about the tour re-visitng england again next year.

I've been busy thinking about new designs and materials and most importantly slogans!

So I've firstly Iv'e completely rehashed my Zwift banners - they were in an orange cotton - these are now in a very vibrant bright orange felt and feel really nice quality.

My new re-designed zwift banner

This then transpired into me making a small yellow felt wall hanging - the kind you could hang at your desk, or gift to a friend. Not too big but it was important to me that they reflected the Tour De france colours.

Tour De France Banner

I've made the base in a yellow felt, then added a large white spot in the background to replicate the wheel in the official Tour de France logo. I added red spots to the white 'wheel' to symbolise the 'KOM' shirt or 'King of the mountain' shirt and added the words from the Queen song that has been so popular for the last few decades ( I wanted to use it somewhere and this seemed like the perfect place!) I've added a wooden dowel rod at the top and a green ribbon to represent the 'Sprint' shirt so I think I've covered all the official Tour shirt colours!

Four New Tour de france badges

Next up, seeing as I've got in to making custom felt badges in the last year, I wanted to make something small that would show support but you could also wear on your coat or bag. I deliberated over which way around the layers of felt and the colours should go but I think the final result is the best formula with the green as the base, it highlights the other two layers and makes the lettering stand out.

close up of the glitter on one of the new tour de france badges

I've also decided to use black glitter for the lettering to just add an extra dimension and add to the feeling of a celebration.

The slogans I finally decided upon reflect the bunting - there are currently four different versions of badge:

1: Shut Up Legs! " which comes from former German professional cyclist Jens Voigt, who used it to mentally overcome extreme physical pain during gruelling, long-distance breakaways in races like the Tour de France. Voigt populariSed the phrase in interviews to describe commanding his body to keep pedalling despite fatigue.

2: Allez Allez Allez! as a nod to the tour de france.

3: fierce femme - to support the ladies race starting at the end of july from leeds

4: och aye! - a funny parody on the scottish quotes used in every day life.

Finally, for the bunting. I didn't want to use coloured hessian again. it fades and frays, is not of a great durable quality and after each pennant is cut out it then require sewing around all the edges to prevent further fraying! Very time consuming when you have a stack of 100 to get through!

Tour De France Edinburgh Bunting

As i've been using felt so much in other products i make, i thought this the most practical and colourful, although not weather resistant, all my bunting has always kind of really always been intended for indoor use unless of course on the rare opportunity the sun shows it's face and the wind dies down! Iv'e designed it in mind with it lasting a long time, not just for a celebration but to wrap up and keep or use for year long decor.

close up of the scottish flag pennant

I wanted to include the sCottish flag or a symbol of scotland in the bunting,just as i did with the yorskire rose in the Tour De yorkshire bunting i made back in 2014 - i also incorporated alternate blue and yellow pennants to reperesent the colours of the yorkshire flag but this time i decided to just stick with one blue pennant to symbolise Scotland with the white cross. Iv'e overlaid this with the wording ; 'grand Depart grand Bretagne 2027'.

I usually have seven pennants for each set of bunting - it just looks best aesthetically and works well design wise for an event like this where the central pennant can be the most important with the other pennants helping to 'tell the story'. ( As in my wimbldon bunting).

So the other colours of the other six pennants had to reflect the tour colours, so two green, two yellow ,there should be two white but i thought that including the red spots would tick both boxes for both of those tour shirts.

close up of the spotty velvet I make for each set

The next problem i had was for the red spotty felt because none exists that is pre-made and ready to cut. Therefore I have to print all of these in-house with the red spots before even starting with any slogans or decor on top.

I've gone for green as the outer colour and the most solid colour to 'bookend' the bunting, yellow as the next colour and KING of the mountain spots as the colour closest to the blue scottish flag pennant.

I had to include a bike to help visually explain the 'story' of the bunting so we have two green bookend pennants depicting ' Och Aye! and a bike and Allez Allez Allez!; two yellow pennants deicting 'See you jimmy! and a bike - a refernce to the famous take of rus abbott in the 80s and 'on yer bike', then the two spotty pennants 'king of the mountsin and bike' and shut up legs!'

all sewn to a two metre length of blue and green tartan ribbon!

the whole collection for the tour de france edinburgh 2027

All of these make fantastic commemorative gifts and decor for watch parties and celebrations to get us in the mood for the next sportif, decorate our gyms, hold a watch party or motivate us to get out there, get some fresh air and exercise! I've also added a dedicated page just for cycling on the website. I really hope you enjoy them as much i enjoy making them.

AND.... please drop me a comment or a like These are all live now!