Cycling adventures across Yorkshire, Britain and beyond
After a splendid time at Reeth Show yesterday, I rode up hill and down dale to Skipton today: a leisurely forty-mile traverse of the Yorkshire Dales from top to bottom, involving Swaledale, Wensleydale, Coverdale, Wharfedale and Airedale. (There’s something like 30–50 dales in the Dales, so this only involved a fraction of them.) →See map…
Yorkshire’s annual country shows and fairs are a strong part of the county’s culture. They vary from the blockbuster ‘national’ Great Yorkshire Show each July to many dozens of smaller, field-sized village affairs. In the upper middle are grand events such as Reeth Show, up in Swaledale each August Bank Holiday Monday. Today was August…
Yorkshire has many places with very silly names. Rise, Jump, Settle. Idle. Wham. Giggleswick, Land of Nod, Netherthong. Robin Hood (yes, not ‘Robin Hood’s Bay’). And everyone’s favourite, Wetwang. Plus Booze, where I was this morning. The hamlet of under a dozen houses is up a steep, steep lane off Arkengarthdale, not far from Reeth…
I’ve overnighted while cycle-touring in all sorts of places. Docked ferries, (former) jails, military barracks, tractor sheds. Even a rare-breed tropical spider house in the Amazon – though it wasn’t called that, it was called a ‘holiday lodge’. But last night, in the Yorkshire Dales, I experienced a rather special first: staying overnight in a…
I’m exploring the touring possibilities of a folding bike plus inflatable boat. The bike can carry the deflated boat; and the boat can carry the folded bike. Which enables amphibious linear journeys: you don’t have to paddle back to where you left the bike (or car, not that I can be bothered with cars). You…
If you only visit one ‘thankful village’ – one of the 53 in England and Wales to have all its sons survive WWI – make it Scruton, up in North Yorkshire, between Richmond and Northallerton. The last of my rides to all five of Yorkshire’s finished here today, at a village where, more than any…
The Egton Bridge Gooseberry Show – on the first Tuesday in August each year – is the world’s most ancient: over two centuries old, having started in 1800. A splendid excuse to visit the North Yorkshire Moors village today on my folding bike, thanks to a £3 trip on the 840 Coastliner from York, Britain’s…
Among England and Wales’s 53 ‘thankful villages’ – ones whose soldiers all survived WWI – Norton-le-Clay and Cundall, east of Ripon in North Yorkshire, are the closest together: neighbours, in fact, only a couple of kilometres of farmland lane apart. Today was baking hot and I wasn’t up for a long ride, so a bus-assisted…
My rides to all five of Yorkshire’s ‘Thankful Villages’ – whose sons emerged unscathed from WWI – continued this summer day with a ride from Hull to Catwick. (See map below). The small East Yorkshire village is that rarity, ‘doubly thankful’: one of only 14 in England and Wales that also came through WWII without…
After a few days in Denmark, I cycled a few days in Schleswig-Holstein. Why? Ah, that old question. Well, I’m planning a German End to End later this year, and this seemed good preparation. Northern Germany does good cycling infra. The hundred-plus-mile trip from Flensburg, on the Danish border, through the DK/DE ambiguity of Schleswig-Holstein…