Organisers of a major cycle event say hundreds of people have asked for refunds, after they had to switch it from being on closed roads to open roads - because of the Glastonbury Festival.

The 100 mile sportive is part of the Great British Cycling Festival taking place in Norfolk in June 2019, with the idea that riders could travel the same route as elite cyclists competing in the 2019 HSBC UK National Road Championships.

But problems with getting qualified staff to marshal the route, which starts and finishes in Norwich, means organisers have had to announced it will not be a closed route.

That means cyclists taking part in the event on Sunday, June 30, will have to share the roads with other traffic - and emails have been sent to the 1,600 entrants.

They are being given the choice of continuing in the event at a partially reduced price, but on open roads, a full £78 refund or a place in a Cambridgeshire event which is on closed roads.

Tom Caldwell, director of event organisers Golazo, said hundreds of people had requested refunds.

He told BBC Radio Norfolk: 'There happens to be a very large event happening in the UK that same weekend in Glastonbury and that has literally hoovered up most of the people who have the power to stop traffic.

'It became obvious to us were wouldn't be able to get sufficient volumes of those people who could do that, hence we've had to make this call.

'We've had roughly 500 responses, so far, to the people who have entered and around half of those have cancelled,

'I don't think there's much surprise about that, because they wanted to enter a closed road event and it's no longer closed road.'

The National Road Championships run from Thursday, June 27 until Sunday, June 30. Previous winners include Sir Bradley Wiggins, Laura Kenny, Geraint Thomas, Lizzie Deignan and Mark Cavendish.