Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2022 Stage 1 - Copenhagen to Copenhagen (Denmark)

Day 1 of the Tour de France is here and it is a 13km long Individual Time Trial that starts and ends in Copenhagen, Denmark.  Hmmm, not in France, is this a thing that happens often, I have no idea as last year was the first time I've ever paid it any attention and that is only because I joined up to a Tour de Fleece team.

The Map

Sights and points of interest along the route

Today's route takes the riders over The Queen Louise Bridge, the Tyco Brahe Planetarium, the former Carlsbery Brewery, the castle and the zoo. The riders race down the Norrebrograde, the main shopping street in Norrebro and on the side of a house on this street is a huge mural depicting a young woman riding a bike that was painted in 1993 by Finnish street artist Seppo Mattinens.  

Seppo Mattinens mural

Through St. John's Market square with it's granite statue by Jorgen Haugen Sorensen (1934-2021) and the oldest church in the district, St John's Church, built in 1861.  At the centre of the Trianglen is an Art Nouveau tram station built in 1907 by Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint

The riders will cycle past Parken Stadium, the home of FC Copenhagen and the Danish national football team before approaching Kastellet, a baroque style fortress built in 1692 by Christian IV of Denmark and the Citadel defended Copenhagen against the English in 1807 but then surrendered with the rest of the city.  The Citadel was captured by German troops during the invasion of Copenhagen on 9th April 1940.  

Kastellet

There is also a park near here, Langelinie Park, that contains many monuments and statues including the Gefion Fountain donated to the city by the Carlsberg Foundation on the 50th anniversary of the brewery and installed in 1908.  The park also contains the Ivar Huitfeldt Column and the Little Mermaid built in 1913 and donated to the city by Carl Jacobsen, the founder of the Carlsberg brewery.

The Little Mermaid

Riders then travel along Amailegade, a long street lined with elegant mansions and palaces, most dating from the second half of the 18th century with many once belonging to various members of the Royal Family.

Amalienborg Palace and the equestrian statue

The route ends with Hans Christian Andersen Boulevard, the widest and busiest street in Copenhagen and is 1.3km long and contains the Central Fire Station built in 1892.

Who Won the Stage and Who Won What Jersey

The Stage winner is Yves Lampaert for Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl.

The Yellow Jersey won by Yves Lampaert for Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl.

The Green Jersey won by Yves Lampaert for Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl.

The Polka Dot Jersey has not been won yet!

The White Jersey won by Tadej Pogacar for UAE Team Emirates.

Leading team: Jumbo-Visma

The Daily Challenge

They are starting in Copenhagen, the City of Fairy Tales, where Hans Christian Andersen wrote some of his most famous tales, the race will pass by the statue of the Little Mermaid.  In 1952 a film about the writer/poet was released featuring the song "Wonderful Copenhagen".

The cyclists will be undergoing individual time trials; your challenge is to spin as much as you can for the duration of Wonderful Copenhagen (that's about 2 minutes and 11 seconds!)

Suggested Fibre:  Our recommendation is to grab something from your Botany bag and get cracking!

What I did

We had a similar challenge last year where we had to spin as much as we could within a certain amount of time and measure it.  Well, I got into a right old tangle so I had no intention of doing today's challenge for that reason alone.  What I decided to do was to spin some Llandovery Whiteface Hill hand combed top that I prepared last week from part of a fleece that I finally managed to get hold of this year and it was the last one I needed to complete my British Breeds Project.  

So, 94g of hand combed top, spun to sport weight gives me 239m of finished yarn, which in terms of the TdF length calculations is 717m - 2 singles plus the plied length = 3 x finished yarn length.

Norfolk Horn Sheep

The Norfolk Horn is one of Britain's oldest sheep breeds, dating back to at least the 13th Century, and was developed in East Anglia from an old Saxon black-faced sheep that were small, feral and deer-like. It does well in dry, cold conditions and will forage on sparse vegetation and thrives without loosing condition.  It is known to walk long distances to find grazing so can be used to maintain large sites.  They were used in the foldcourse rotation system of farming, grazing on the stubble of harvested cereal crops and fertilizing and improving the soil with their manure as they grazed, which then produced better crops in following years.  They were historically concentrated to the heathland areas of the Breckland, North West Norfolk and the Suffolk coastal region.

Top: Norfolk Horn Ewes
Botton: Norfolk Horn Ram

Prior to the late 18th century, little attention was paid to pedigree breeding or improving livestock by selective breeding.  When attention began to be paid to such matters the breed was not held in high regard and other breeds were introduced to the area, such as the Southdown.  Some flocks were replaced by the Southdown whilst others chose to cross-breed the Southdown and the Norfolk Horn to improve the breed and this ultimately led to the development of the Suffolk, which is a very successful and important breed today and the Norfolk's involvement in creating this new breed would ultimately lead to its own demise and near extinction.

The numbers of Norfolk Horns declined throughout the 19th century until there were only about 300 left in existence.  One man saved the breed from extinction.  Mr J D Sayer kept a flock from 1895 and built it up and in 1919 his was the only known flock of Norfolk Horns left in existence.  This would obviously have genetic and inbreeding consequences.  He maintained this flock for 30 years until 1947 when the remaining 13 sheep were sent to the Cambridge Animal Research Station for them to study the inheritance of Cryptorchidism, a characteristic sign of inbreeding and is the term used for undescended testicles, a condition which decreases fertility. By the end of the 1960's only 14 seriously inbred individuals existed and the last pure breed ram died in 1971.  

This situation was the catalyst for the formation of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust and careful back-crossing using a Suffolk ram (genetically a descendant of the original Norfolk Horn) began and ensured the recreation of the Norfolk breed to be as genetically close as possible to the original breed. Continuation of careful breeding resulted in an increase in numbers and a wider gene pool but still fewer than 300 by 1994 and there is still a risk of inbreeding. 

The numbers have increased since 1994 but they are still rare and are found mostly in an around East Anglia with other flocks dispersed across the UK, which helps if there should ever be another outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease.  The Norfolk Horn sheep, at the time of writing, is in the Rare Breeds Survival Trust category 4: At Risk (900-1500) registered breeding ewes.  

They are a medium sized sheep with a long body, black face and long black legs and ears. Mature ewes weigh about 70kg and rams about 90-95kg. Both sexes have horns, the ewes have smaller horns than the rams, who have large spiral horns.

They produce a fleece that is short stapled and white in the adult, although lambs are often darker or mottled.  A small amount of black fibres or black spots is permissible in the adult fleece.  The staple length is between 3 and 4 inches long (7-10cm long) and can be anything from 1.75 to 2.25 kilos in weight. The fine fleeces were used in the Middle Ages for the East Anglian worsted industry upon which most of the regions wealth was based.

This fleece can be spun from teased locks or it can be carded or combed. It's a versatile fleece to work with.  If you dye this fleece it gives clean colours.

Yarns spun from Norfolk Horn fleece are durable but relatively soft and can be used to make hats, mittens, sweaters, socks, blankets and similar items.  

I have bought this breed in as 100g of pre-washed fleece ready for me to prepare for spinning and then spin.

There were a few small clumps of black fibres which I removed and then I combed the rest and I got 56g of hand combed top.  There are still a large number of black fibres in the hand combed nest, some contain a lot more than others.  I removed as many of these as I could using a pair of tweezers to clean them up before, during and after spinning.

My finished yarn is of medium quality to the touch of the hand and is a lot like the downs breeds and other similar breeds.  When next to some of the other "white" yarns, it leans more towards a pale pink/beige tone whilst others lean towards the pale creamy/yellow tone.  Very few head directly towards pure white.  My knitted piece for the project took 21g/55m so I have some left to do whatever with.

Castlemilk Moorit Sheep

The Castlemilk Moorit sheep hasn't been around for all that long, only since the early 1900's after Sir John Buchanan Jardine, a Scottish aristocrat who's family home was at Castlemilk in Dumfrieshire, who had a passion for breeding animals such as hounds, horses, cattle and sheep and who fascinated particularly in breeding animals in shades of brown.  He used Shetland Sheep in the Moorit colour, along with Manx Loaghtans and a mouflon ram (a wild sheep that is darker on its upper parts and lighter on the lower parts, including the neck and belly) to produce an easy-care brown sheep with short, tight wool that was suitable for hand-spinning by the family.  

The family continued to raise the breed until 1970 when Sir John Buchanan Jardine died and most of his flock were culled aside from a small number that was sold to the late Joe Henson.  Joe Henson was the owner of Cotswold Farm Park, which was established in the 1960's to protect rare breeds of livestock and all present day Castlemilk Moorit Sheep are descendants of those handful of sheep.  He was also the founder-chairman of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust and received an MBE in the 2011 Queen's Birthday Honors for services to conservation. His son, Adam Henson, is a well known farmer and TV presenter and appears on BBC Countryfile.

They are fine boned, vigorous and self-reliant with long legs and a short tail.  Both sexes have horns, the ewes have two uniform wide-spreading horns whilst the rams have horns that spiral. They are varying shades of brown, from mid-brown to dark brown with similar face colour.  They should have white around the eyes, lower jaw, belly, knees and inside the lower leg and the tail.  They adapt well to most conditions and environments.  The Castlemilk Moorit sheep, at the time of writing, is in Rare Breeds Survival Trust category 5: At Risk (900-1500 registered breeding ewes). 

They produce a fleece that weighs 1-2kg and the staple length is between 1.5 and 4.75 inches long 3.8-12cm).  The fleece is kemp free and the locks tend to be short and blocky and often have sun-bleached tips.  This is probably best carded due to the shortness of the staple and how fine the wool is.  The wool is very similar to that of the Manx Loaghtan, which it is genetically descended from. 

I have bought this breed in as a 106g bag of pre-prepared roving that was ready to spin as, for me, this was the easier option due to the shortness of the staple.

My finished yarn is of medium quality to the touch of the hand, similar to Shetland and Manx Loaghtan.  My knitted piece for the project took 27g/69m so I have some left to do whatever with.

Boreray Sheep

The Boreray Sheep are a very small breed of primitive short tailed sheep that is descended from the now extinct Scottish Tan Face mixed with Hebridean Blackface bloodlines.  The females have horns that are thinner than the males and are curved.  Rams grow horns that are especially large and they spiral beyond 360°.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 19th century.   

The history of the breed is quite interesting and very complex.  They are from St Kilda, which is a group of four small islands called Hirta, Boreray, Soay and Dùn, and a number of sea stacks that are about 112 miles west of Mainland Scotland. The islands are thought to have been permanently occupied about 2,000 years ago, although there is evidence of Bronze Age occupation dating back to over 4,000 years ago.  

Due to the location of the islands any population would rely on sheep and fishing for their livelihood with spinning of wool done by the women and weaving done by the men and used the wool from all of the sheep, both feral and domesticated, and all from all breeds within the small group of islands.  The population peaked at just under 200 on Hirta in the 1600's with just 36 inhabitants left by 1930. The Islands were evacuated in 1930 after they all almost died from starvation following a particularly hard winter and they relocated elsewhere. The St Kildan's never owned the land on which they lived and worked for a non-resident lord and ownership changed many times, usually between the MacLeods and MacDonalds of Skye.  After the evacuation ownership was in the hands of Lord Dumfries, the fifth Marquess of Bute until his death in 1956, when ownership transferred to the National Trust for Scotland.

Whilst their sheep and cattle were ferried off Hirta they had kept a second flock of domestic sheep on Boreray as a backup in case anything untoward happened to their main flock.  A group of inhabitants would visit once a year to collect the fleece but the trip was dangerous and a group had been stranded on the island for the entire winter one year.  In the last few years before they were evacuated there were not enough able-bodied men to make the trip and so the sheep on Boreray returned to being wild and feral.  Descendants of those sheep are still there today. 

In the 1970's half a dozen sheep were removed from the island as part of a conservation effort to protect their bloodlines and there are now a few small flocks of Boreray Sheep in other areas of Britain.  In 1999 there was an estimate of just 74 ewes and 10 rams and by 2012 there was 204 ewes registered with The Rare Breeds Survival Trust and the numbers have been increasing year on year and in 2017 they were moved from Category 2: Critical to Category 3: Vulnerable (500-900 breeding ewes), where they remain as of the time of writing.

The fleece are small, usually 900-1600g and is usually creamy white or tan, with a small proportion being grey or dark brown and lambs can be born completely black or with large patches of black and whilst they do occasionally stay that colour they usually change to cream or tan.  Sometimes they have dark rump patches and dark collar, particularly rams.  They shed their fleece naturally, usually by July, although some shearing may be necessary in older sheep who do not moult their fleece as easily as younger individuals.  The fleece can vary greatly with some having a fine undercoat and others having long hair like fibres and everything in between.  The staple length can range between 2 and 6 inches.

 

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared roving which was sourced from a Rare Breeds Survival Trust breeder and my purchase helps to maintain the rare breed sheep.  

There was lots of little bits of vegetable matter in the roving, which I removed before or during spinning, which was a challenge due to the shortness of the staple but its very soft and I am very happy with the results.  My finished yarn is 43g/155m of sport weight yarn.

 My knitted piece for the project only took 8g/29m so I have some left to do whatever with.

Manx Loagthan Sheep

Carrying on with my British Breeds project my next breed is the Manx Loaghtan (pronounced Loch-tun) and is believed to be derived from a combination of Gaelic words, either lugh dhoan (mouse brown) or lhosht dhoan (burnt brown). Either could be true given the natural colour of this breed of sheep, a soft shade of brown that is called "moorit" and ranges from fawn to dark reddish brown.

As with most sheep, especially the coloured varieties, sunlight does tend to bleach the tips of the locks and makes the sheep look lighter in colour than the rest of the fleece.

This Manx Loaghtan has just been sheared and clearly shows a much darker colour fleece.

The Manx Loaghtan sheep, at the time of writing, is in the "At Risk" category, according to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.  This means that there is between 900 and 1500 sheep of this breed registered with the relevant breed society.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 11th century.

Historically they are native to The Isle of Man, hence the name "Manx" and the soft brown "moorit" colour that the breed is well known for today used to be the rare colour, with white, grey and black being the dominant colours.  All that changed during a period of near extinction in the 1950's where numbers were reduced to just 43 individual sheep and now the "moorit" brown seems to be the only colour that has survived that event, although the lambs are born black and turn brown within a few weeks of birth.  There are a few small flocks of this breed outside of the Isle of Man but they are niche grazers and so the right grazing conditions need to be met in order to keep this breed.

Numbers fell by the 1950's due to the introduction of other hill breeds to the Isle of Man and despite efforts to save the breed it is not out of danger yet.  Some of these efforts have included the cancellation of the famous Isle of Man TT races (Tourist Trophy motorcycle races) in 2001, the year of a major outbreak of Foot-and-Mouth disease in the UK, which surrounds the Isle of Man but does not govern it.  Despite the fact that they had only ever previously been cancelled during WWII, since they started in 1907, and the fact that the races are very important to the economy of the self governing island bringing in approximately 40,000 visitors to the island to see the races, the islands government felt the risk to the sheep of contracting the disease from unwitting tourists was far too great to hold the event that year.  Also, in 2009, the European Union recognised the breed with a "Protected Designation of Origin" which is designed to help reconnect farmers with consumers and raise awareness of a unique product, crop or animal.

The Manx Loaghtan is a long legged, fine boned, very hardy primitive breed usually sporting 2 or 4 horns in both sexes and is one of the Northern European Short-Tailed breeds and are valued for conservation grazing as they like rough grazing such as hawthorn and coarse grasses, which then encourages native plants and wildflowers to return and studies on the Isle of Man, Ramsey Island and Bardsey Island show that there appears to be a connection between the presence of Manx Loaghtan and the ability of the Chough to survive.  As they graze and crop the vegetation it gives the birds access to surface-active and soil insects.  The dung they leave behind also attracts beetles and fly larvae which in turn are a food resource for the birds when the ground is hard or other insects are scarce.  When Manx Loaghtan numbers increase, so to Chough numbers, when they decrease the bird population also decreases.

Manx Loaghtan are a small breed of sheep with no wool on their dark face and legs.  They produce a smallish fleece that is in high demand with hand spinners.  Depending on the source of information, the staple length is between 2.5 and 5 inches long (6.5-13 cm long) and can be anything from 1.4-2.5 kilos in weight. 

This fleece can be picked and carded or you can comb if its long enough to.  Personally I go with wool combs all the way as that is my preferred choice of preparation as I prefer to spin worsted style over woollen style and I have never gotten the hang of hand carding. I really must get some proper tuition as its a little embarrassing for a hand spinner not to be able to card, if I can stand the noise of the process as I do find the noise of carding a little hard to bare.  

The Manx Loaghtan fleece can be overdyed but the base colour must be taken into account when choosing a colour.  There are two types of fleece within the breed, not on the same animal, one hairy and one woolly with the hairy one being more durable and the woolly one being much softer but it does have a good amount of bounce.  Its at its best when made into relative lightweight fabrics.  

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared fibre from a fellow spinners de-stash back in May 2020 but the fibre was produced in 2013 by a supplier that I am familiar with.  The general consensus is that fibre deteriorates with age but I personally have rarely found this to be true.  What I did find with this fibre though were lots of small clumps of "rubbish" that, in my opinion, should not have made it into the finished braid of fibre and I had to remove this as I progressed and this meant that my finished yarn was 6g lighter due to the removal of the rubbish.

Spun to Sport Weight my finished yarn is 94g/251m

My finished yarn is lovely and soft and quite bouncy and I do love the unusual shade of brown.  My knitted piece for the project only took 22g/57m, which shows the difference in density with the Cotswold which used 22g/42m.  This difference in density could be attributed to the difference in the breeds fibres or it could be attributed to the difference in my spinning, as I am human and not a regimented machine.

Cotswold Sheep

I've decided to start off with some Cotswold, as I have some of this spun up already in sport weight, so that makes sense to me to use that to make my test samples for the knitted pieces for my throw.  I wrote blog posts at the time of spinning and these can be found here and here.  Sport weight is probably a good weight of yarn to use as all the different fleece types should be able to be spun at this weight without any issues as some breeds just can't be spun too finely and others can't be spun too thickly so sport weight is a good mid-weight yarn to aim for.

This is Angelo from the award winning Pickwick Flock owned by Rob Harvey Long of Malmesbury, Wiltshire and it is yarn I produced from his fleece that I have used for my sampler.

This photo I download from the internet and it shows off the fleece nicely.

The Cotswold sheep, at the time of writing, is in the "At Risk" category, according to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.  This means that there is between 900 and 1500 sheep of this breed registered with the relevant breed society.

Historically they are a descendent of sheep introduced to the Cotswold Hills by the Romans and by the middle ages the area was known as a centre of the English wool trade but as the wool market slowed down their popularity fell and by the end of WWI just a few flocks remained and by the 1950's the numbers had fallen even further.  Numbers have since risen but and the breed is currently at a stable position but is not out of danger yet.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 13th century.

The Cotswold is a fairly large, hardy breed and is one of the English Longwool breeds with a well developed forelock of curly fleece.  They stand tall and their bodies are quite long and their face and legs are white and free from wool.  The produce a heavy, lustrous fleece that is in high demand with hand spinners.  Depending on the source of information, the staple length is between 6 and 15 inches long (15-38 cm long) and can be anything from 4-10 kilos in weight. The majority are white but black and grey can also be found, although these are rare.

You can spin this fleece straight from the locks if you like or you can flick or comb them.  Personally I go with wool combs all the way.  The locks can also be used as they are to create novelty yarns by spinning the ends in and letting the lock fall free and dangly, the same can be done in weaving.  They are also often used to make doll's wigs.  The Cotswold fleece takes dye well and the lustrousness makes the colours really shine.  Its good for heavyweight items that need to endure a lot of wear such as rugs, bags and furnishings but if you spin it fine it is wonderful for lace as it produces very good distinct stitches.  I made lace with some of Angelo's fleece and you can see photos here.

When it came to knitting up my sample for my throw, it took me 3 attempts before I was happy with the chosen alphabet style, undoing each one and reusing the yarn.  The knack is being able to read what you have knitted, if you can't make out what it says then its useless. I used an old cross stitch design programme to make the charts for knitting the words.

This is the yarn that I used.

I am sure you can read what it says

My knitted piece took just 22g/42m of yarn and I haven't washed and blocked the knitted piece yet, I want to wait until I've made a good number of them but I've pinned it out to take a photo as without the pins it just rolls up on itself.  It is a fair size so I know that the finished throw is going to be massive but I'm OK with that.

I have a crazy idea

I've had an idea for a little while now and have been buying breed sample fibre boxes when I see them come up for sale at various fibre suppliers, spreading the cost out over this past year.  I haven't got many different breeds yet but its a start.

I want to make some kind of large sampler type blanket/throw type of thing using as many different sheep breeds that I can get my hands on and each knitted piece will feature that breeds name on it somehow and all done in the sheep's natural colours, I won't be using any dyed wool in this whatsoever.  I have a mix of British and Non-British breeds at the moment but given the number of breeds available, there are 57 different British breeds alone, I think it would be wise to make two blanket/throws, one for British and one for other breeds, otherwise this thing will be huge and too big to handle.  

I need to do a bit of sample knitting to find the right alphabet that will come out in the knitting but I'm hoping that won't take too long to sort and then I can get on with it.  It will be an epic project but I don't need to do it all at once, I can fit it in between other projects.

As part of this British Sheep Breeds sampler that I want to make I will take the opportunity to write a blog post about each breed as I spin the yarn.  Some breeds I will prepare from fleece and other breeds will be bought in already prepared as either roving or top, depending on what is available as a fair amount of the breeds are rare and also the fact that I couldn't cope with having full fleeces of so many breeds, the odd one or two maybe, if I have to go that route, but I really only need enough to make each knitted piece.

Due to the fact that I no longer purchase from a particular fibre supplier I will not be buying a fibre advent calendar like I have in the previous 2 years.  I've not sourced an alternative so I will use the money saved on that to start purchasing what I need for this breeds project.

I bought a Llanwenog sheep's fleece

Llanwenog, rolls off the tongue doesn't it.  Llanwenog, Llanwenog, Llanwenog.  Great name for a Welsh breed of sheep.  I've been interested in trying this breed for some time now but its quite rare and the last couple of years I've either had plenty of fleece already waiting to be made into yarn, not had the money to spend on fleece (that I don't really need) or, as in last year, not being well enough to tackle the job of cleaning a fleece.

This one has come from a farm near Llandeilo in Carmarthenshire and the pre-wash weight is 1.7kg.

This arrived yesterday and I've washed it today but unfortunately the farmers sheep markers have not washed out but I did isolate that section and washed it separately so that I could keep the stained fibres together.  Some of it did wash out a bit so its not as heavily stained but it will need to be dyed properly with my dyes as it will never wash out fully.  I might dye quite a bit of this fleece in different colours before combing it and see what interesting yarns I can make.