Wind, cobbles, punchy climbs, a handful of gruelling mountain-top finishes, almost no individual time trial:

the Tour de France organisers have designed one of the most exciting courses for the 2015 race, which will heavily favour the climbers.

The Tour will climax with a nervous, demanding penultimate stage finishing at l'Alpe d'Huez, with the race winner probably emerging from a nerve-wracking three-week dogfight. The race, which will feature time bonuses - 10, six and four seconds for the top three stage finishers - for the first time since 2008, will start from Utrecht, Netherlands, where the gusty winds could split the peloton and result in some fancied riders losing valuable time early on.

The third stage in northern France takes the bunch through cobbled sections again, on which lightweights often struggle, with the notable exception of the defending champion, Italy's Vincenzo Nibali, who this year hammered his rivals on the cobbles. "We can't say the route is tailor-made for Nibali because you never know what can happen," said the Tour director Christian Prudhomme. Nibali said: "One thing is sure: this Tour is going to be a huge battle. It's a tricky first week, very treacherous. The final week is extremely hard."

There are five mountain-top finishes but also a couple of very short, brutal climbs on the Mur de Huy, where the Fleche Wallonne ­classic ends, and at Mur de Bretagne. In the Pyrenees, finishes up at La Pierre Saint-Martin (15.3k at an average gradient of 7.4 per cent) and on the Plateau de Beille (15.8k at 7.9 per cent) should sort out the challengers.

It will be far from over, however, as four consecutive gruelling mountain stages are on the menu in the final week in the Alps. The 17th stage ending in Pra Loup is reminiscent of that in 1975 when France's Bernard Thevenet beat the Belgian great Eddy Merckx.

Organisers have spiced things up for the trek to Saint-Jean de Maurienne the following day with a very short and brutal 18-hairpin climb of the Lacets de Montvernier shortly before the finish. The 19th stage will be the queen stage with a 138k ride to La Toussuire featuring four demanding climbs, before the 20th stage, which should favour the aggressive riders as it is only 107k long with the Col du Galibier in the middle.

There will also be only 14k of individual time trials, a post-Second World War low.