In 1974 the tour made its first visit to the United Kingdom, with a circuit stage on the Plympton By-pass, near Plymouth, England.

[1] The teams entering the race were:[1] Eddy Merckx, who had been absent in 1973 after winning four Tours in a row, was present again.

Ocaña had crashed in the Tour de l'Aude, gone home and was fired by his team for not communicating.

Bernard Thévenet, who was considered a potential winner, had crashed several times in the 1974 Vuelta a España.

[3] The 1974 Tour de France started on 27 June, and had two rest days, in Aix-les-Bains and Colomiers.

[4] The highest point of elevation in the race was 2,556 m (8,386 ft) at the summit tunnel of the Col du Galibier mountain pass on stage 11.

[3] The second stage was in Plymouth, the first time that the Tour de France visited England.

[10] The riders did not like the experiment, as the British immigration officials made the cyclists wait for a long time when entering the country and again when returning to France.

[3][10] Merckx collected bonus time in the sprints, and in the fourth stage took back the leading position in the general classification, with Gerben Karstens in second place.

This also happened in the tenth stage: Poulidor joined the crucial escape, but could not beat Merckx in the final sprint.

[3] The Tour was in Spain at that point, and Basque separatist placed bombs on press and team cars.

There was violence around France, Andorra and in Corsica from unrelated protests including from farmers and other angry nationalists and in some areas people hung dead pigs from street lamps.

The bombings in the Pyrenees took place in the middle of the night in Lourdes where thirteen vacant buses and two parked cars where destroyed.

Leaflets were distributed threatening the fascist government of Spain and telling Spanish riders to leave the race.

[13] Other acts of violence against the Tour included many trees being cut down to block the route, which had to be dealt with and removed.

Merckx finished in fourth place, losing time to Poulidor, Lopez Carril and Pollentier.

[3][14] In the seventeenth stage, Poulidor again won time, finishing second after Jean-Pierre Danguillaume, and jumped to the third place in the general classification, behind Merckx and Lopez Carril.

[24] At the conclusion of the Tour, Eddy Merckx won the overall super-combativity award, also decided by journalists.