Team Sky's Wout Poels took the win on the fifth stage of the Tour Of Britain
Prudhoe in Northumbria was the venue for the start of a fifth 166.4km stage which took in Hadrian's Wall, before crossing into Cumbria, Ullswater in the Lake District National Park before concluded with a summit finish of Hartside, near Penrith.
With yesterday's stage winner Fernando Gaviria of Etixx Quickstep not starting, Conor Dunne, Mark McNally, Michael Morkov, Pete Williams and Morgan Kneisky formed the first break.
They were 3.55 ahead when Pete Williams, the sprint leader added more points to his tally when he took the first sprint of the day ahead of Dunne and McNally who took the points on the first climb at Hayton Bridge.
Through Greenhead with a lead of 5.50 and Williams took the second sprint before McNally took the second climb.
The gap was down to 3.45 as they passed through the feedzone with 71kms left and with Pete Williams taking a second place behind McNally, that was enough to put Williams in the lead of both the KOM and Sprint competitions.
With only Pete Williams, Michael Morkov of Tinkoff Saxo and Mark McNally left up front, Williams took the sprint in Penrith with 23kms left.
Sir Bradley Wiggins working for Owain Douell was leading the peloton and they reduced the lead of the trio to just 42 seconds with fourteen kilometres remaining.
Team Sky took over,leaing a peloton which included race leader JJ Lobato of Movistar and they had the trio in sight and with 9.8kms to go, Gerald Ciolek of MTN Qhubeka led the peloton towards the final climb of Hartside which has maximum gradients of 13%.
Lobato was dropped by the peloton and Cannondale Garmin's Ruben Zepunkte, who was 22 seconds down on GC, was able to get down ten seconds clear with five kilometres left.
Peter Kennaugh launched a raid which saw him bridge to Zepunkte and then sparked an attack from Stefan Kruiswijk of LottoNL-Jumbo who led until Wout Poels of Team Sky joined him.
There was a crash and Teo Geohagen Hart went down with some 3.1kms remaining..
Poels put in another attack with Kruiswijk and Edvald Boasson-Hagen chasing.
They go up to Poels only for the 27 year old Dutchman to attack once more.
However, under the flam rouge, it was th Norwegian Edvald Boasson-Hagen who was leading and taking on a strong wind.
The MTN Qhubeka rider rode away but Poels came back and passed him with just over a hundred metres to go, to win in 4.12.21.
Edvald Boasson-Hagen was second with Benat Intxausti third, Stybar fourth and Guldhammer fifth.
Edvald Basson-Hagen now leads the race by a second.