How can I recover photos from my iCloud account onto my PC?

I am currently confused as to why I can't seem to figure out how to restore photos onto my PC from a backup on my iCloud account, they were stored on my old iPhone which I no longer have. I backed the iPhone up to iCloud and have been trying to find a way to view the pictures and I can't seem to get my head round it..

The iPhone that I had has been sold but before selling it I thought backing the whole phone up onto iCloud would of been an ideal in-case I may have wanted to recover it in the future for any reasons.

Could anybody possibly answer as to why I can't seem to recover them?

Help!