SHE could have chosen a special dinner or an elaborate party to celebrate her 40th birthday, but York mum Sally Clough went for a more unusual way of marking the day.

Three weeks before the elite cyclists of the Tour de France arrive in York, Sally and friends Phillipa Ormes and Carolyn Myers jumped aboard a rickshaw hired from Get Cycling, and went on their own tour of York.

Sally said: "We are all really into fitness, and normally on a Friday we would go to a spinning class together.

"I do a school run everyday from Bishopthorpe to Bootham and I am always joking that I should get a rickshaw to dodge the traffic. That's where the idea came from."

The trio took it in turns to pedal along the riverside and round the city centre, stopping for coffee on Bishopthorpe Road and ending with a picnic in the Museum Gardens, before Sally used the rickshaw to collect her children from school.

Harry, 10, and Martha, 7, were thrilled with their unusual journey home, she said.

"I had told them what I would be doing, but I don't think they really knew what a rickshaw was. One of Harry's friends said 'You're so lucky!' when he saw it."