Surrey will host the penultimate stage of this year’s Tour of Britain when the race sweeps the UK this September.

The 96-mile stage will take place on Saturday September 21, starting in Epsom and finishing in a final climb up Guildford High Street.

Previous competitors include former world champion and Tour de France stage winner Mark Cavendish and Olympic gold medallist and Tour de France winner Sir Bradley Wiggins.

This year’s Surrey stage is even tougher than 2012 with daunting climbs over the first half of the race before some flat-out sprints in the run up to Guildford.

In between it will pass through towns and villages including Leatherhead, East Horsley, Dorking, Holmbury St Mary, Cranleigh, Shere, Send, Woking, Ottershaw, Chobham, Knaphill, Normandy, Elstead, Churt and Farnham.

Record Tour of Britain crowds turned out in Surrey last year, some 225,000, as Mark Cavendish won the Surrey stage and fellow Brit, Jonathan Tiernan Locke, took the overall crown.

The event is said to have generated almost £7.2 million for Surrey’s economy and was watched by almost one million television viewers on each of the event’s eight days.