One world of cycle touring: Latest posts

More research for the Yorkshire Dales guidebook today, and several unexpected, quirky delights: an astronomical observatory with yet another solar system scale model; Yorkshire’s other most famous other brewery town; a bit of the Himalayas in the Dales; and another sculpture park with another miniature Stonehenge. After a very pleasant chat about bikes and touring...

Today’s fieldwork for the Yorkshire Dales guidebook update involved the world’s oldest sweetshop, a remote cul-de-sac pub, a hidden gem of a gorge, plenty of lovely scenery, and a hedgehog abducted by aliens. I cycled up Nidderdale from Harrogate via Ripley, a pretty village I’ve blogged about before. I enjoyed a pork pie from the...

It may pose as Cumbria (or worse, now, ‘Westmorland and Furness’) but Sedbergh and environs was in Yorkshire up to 1974. So the 2016 extension of the Yorkshire Dales to include it was only righting a historical wrong. Anyway, I spent three days of fieldwork around Sedbergh for the Yorkshire Dales Slow Travel guidebook that...

Stage 3 of the Tour of Britain went through Market Weighton today – a £2 bus ride on the X46 from my house, with bikes welcome on board – so I went along to enjoy the roadside spectating festivities. Watching the race flash past is a bit like an eclipse. There’s an hour or two...

Swaledale is the most epic of the Yorkshire Dales. If Wensleydale is a Mozart concerto, and Wharfedale a Sibelius symphony, Swaledale is a Richard Strauss opera. An intense elemental-forces tale of love, conflict, separation, nine-child families and sheep. And cream teas with squirty cream. Our Yorkshire Farm, you could call it, or perhaps Unsere wunderschön...

In the early 1960s, a volcanic eruption off the Icelandic coast created a new island: Surtsey, which is still there today. Well, anything other countries can do, Yorkshire can do too. Just a bit flatter, especially the vowels. Until the 21st century, Yorkshire had no islands to speak of. And you know what Yorkshire folk...

En route home from yesterday’s ride to all England’s highest roads, I rode from Teesdale to Kirkby Stephen. With a couple of hours to kill before my train, I worked them to death, doing some quick research for the Slow Travel Guide to the Yorkshire Dales that I’m updating. I’d never ridden the B6276 road...

The six highest roads in England are close together in the North Pennines, south-east of Alston. Close enough to make an inviting, but strenuous, day ride. I couldn’t resist trying it out today, for a magazine article. The exact summit heights are, and therefore identity of the highest is, a matter for debate. Locals with...

Just a few places to tick off updating today: Askrigg, Bainbridge, Hawes. Just as well, as I had a ferocious headwind all day. I took another lovely little back road that was new to me – between Aysgarth and Cubeck via Thornton Rust, who sounds like a minor 1950s thespian. Fine views over Wensleydale, and...

A circular ride today, Aysgarth – Bishopdale – Coverdale – Aysgarth, involving racehorses, Richard III, a grand castle, and Britain’s weirdest attraction. I breezed through some Bishopdale villages, including the comparatively metropolitan West Burton, with its fine green and friendly pubs and shops (most miraculously still going). It also has a lovely hidden waterfall I...