Cycle touring, my world

Dumfries and Galloway is said to have the most roads in Britain per head of population. There’s certainly a lot of empty tarmac, and often the network of single-track, untrafficked lanes winding through the gently hilly landscape can feel like cycle tracks. This area is known for its Dark Skies, and is a great spot...

I’ve been to both Britain’s shortest place name (Ae) and longest (North Leverton with Habblesthorpe). What Ae lacks in consonants, it makes up with umpteen bike trails in the forest – and wind turbines. I’m going to spell it ‘Æ’, making it a single-letter place name, like Y in France and Å in Norway. (Scotland...

The Solway Firth is hard to tear yourself away from, though that’s because of the quicksand rather than any scenic splendour. Today’s afternoon spin south of Dumfries down by the River Nith was a bit samey, in fact. I spent most of it trying to shake off the one hill that dominated the view, and...

We all have ups and downs, but a paternoster – half-escalator, half-lift – has both at the same time. Britain now has only two or three working examples of this slow-motion, low-tech version of the Star Trek transporter beam… and one of those is in Sheffield University’s Arts Tower, appropriately the home of their architecture...

It was tempting, having finished most of my research, to take the easy option today: one that would involve simply dawdling round Kidderminster, maybe having a leisurely breakfast and lunchtime pint, and getting an early train home. Then I asked myself: would this be the behaviour of a cycle-route research professional? I decided it would...

A longish ride today, out west to the little-visited Clee Hills and back. Pretty good countryside: no great climbs or heart-stopping views, which given the lack of defibrillators round here is not a bad thing, but plenty enough to make it worthwhile. It was a misty start to the day, and I could see little...

Workaday Kidderminster, with its busy roads, isn’t near the top of many bucket lists for cycling. Nor its beauty: the Museum of Carpet is the main attraction, and the colour ain’t red, but it does have a handy canal towpath that takes you out of the centre north or south, and the many bike trails...

Yesterday was east; today was west, through Poole to the Isle of Purbeck via chain ferry, then back to Bournemouth via that endless seafront path. After the cycle path which runs north through parkland alongside the Bourne I took roads to neighbouring Poole. I came here in 2010 as the first of my Rhyming Coast...

Bournemouth’s epic promenade cycle path isn’t quite England’s longest car-free example – that’s Blackpool’s twelve-miler – but at 10 miles, the Dorset resort’s is long enough. The town boomed as a seaside resort in the 19th century, and as one source informed me, has a Victorian gentility still. So long as they use their Victorian...

Yorkshire. Home of Britain’s best scenery, best beer, best roast dinners, best writers, best cricketers. And, perhaps surprising for some, Britain’s – even the world’s – best library. Sort of. The British Library, at St Pancras in London, is nirvana for researchers. It gives free access to (in principle) every book ever published in the...