One of the most popular tours, only surpassed by Germany Tour, is the English tour in the Essex area: Essex Tour.
  Despite the short length of the tour, it has grown into becoming one of the most prestigious achievements. The list of former winners says it all: Teodor Adeler, Landon Naumann, Shawn Rubinstein, Tavio Pardo, Bjerke Sanddahl and Donny Staarman to mention a few.
  
  Unfortunately, this ninth edition will be without the defending champion Donny Staarman from skils, as skils is not participating this season. Nonetheless, the field of favourites is strong.
  
  Welsh team FFL seems to be the strongest competitor this year serving a strong line-up. Australian Halsey Rowzee will lead the team even though the roster also contains the former win Tavio Pardo. Along with the two strong time trial riders, FFL also sent the sprinting superstay and great all-rounder Pascal Lannoye.
  With such a strong team combined with the fact that FFL is the only team to have won the Tour twice, manager James M will probably not be satisfied if not reaching the top spot on the podium!
  
  The home ground team English cway is known to have had Essex Tour as one of the top priorities of the season. Earlier, the well-known Chris Dell conquered two podiums (second and third) while the team this season after the departure of Chris Dell must rely on their new English star Fergal Lemire who started his career on cway but moved on to Team Elfeben in order pursue personal

ambitions. He is now back as the captain of the returning cway team and will deffinetely be doing his best to represent England in its popular tour.
  
  Australian maccas sprinters has been improving drastically and has now reached the 17th place on the world rankings. With the recent success of the young Australian Albert Kern in Perm Tour where he conquered the final stage win along with the second place in both the Youth Classification and the Sprint Classification, the team is anxious to challenge the big guns in Essex.
  
  Essex Tour's Welsh little brother Cymru Taith finished about a week ago and one of the teams who appreciated the Tour was Danish Team Lime. Team Lime struggled to get a steady position in the Top Division and managed to do so with the success in Cymru Taith. Team Lime conquered the first stage with Vebjørn Vågen who is to lead the team in Essex. Vågen finished 8th in the General Classification one position in front of the team's own Ib Bjørnholt who took a stage win on the time trial. Both will certainly be interesting to follow, as this will be their first real shot against the best riders in the world.
  
  Quite surprisingly, former top team Team Zyte entered the young Spanish Natanael Solano as captain. Despite the team's earlier success with Philbert Heffron and Jørg Mølgård, young Solano will lead the team which to many is a quite surprising decision. Solano is yet unknown and was recently after Germany Tour last season picked up by Team Zyte.