Cycling adventures across Yorkshire, Britain and beyond
After a day off yesterday, today’s challenge was the enjoyable ascent of Oberalppass, one of the few alpine cols to sport a lighthouse. Yes, it’s 230 miles from the nearest sea, at Genoa, but as you know the Swiss are very keen on safety. It was another lovely sunny day, with memories of earlier torrential…
Q: What name is given to a cyclable road that crosses a mountain saddle at high altitude? A: Pass! Yes, today it was down to real business: two of the four big passes between us and the End of the End to End, namely Grimselpass and Furkapass. After those will come Oberalppass and Albulapass, but…
No progress on our End to End today, by design: we’re staying in Interlaken again tonight and did the Grosse Scheidegg loop, one of Switzerland’s best day rides. Central to its appeal is the middle eight miles over the 1960m / 6,440ft col between Schwarzhorn and Wetterhorn, which is car-, but not postbus- or horn-,…
A day short on miles (51), modest on elevation (3,600ft), but long on precipitation (6.5 cats and 4.3 dogs). Yes: rain had been forecast for the whole day, and for once the forecast was spot-on. Still, we at least kept positive, if not at all dry. My Ortlieb panniers, like me, are old, battered and…
UEFA, WTO, IOC: this French, western part of Switzerland is home to the HQs of various globally important abbreviations. Something, no doubt, to do with its stability, neutrality, and ability to satisfy expense accounts. Yesterday we passed the Union of European Football Associations, sporting a giant football alerting us to the current Euros, and the…
We’re cycling across Switzerland, land of milk and money, from west to east. That is, from the French border, at the splendidly-named Chancy near Geneva, across its mountainscapes right across to where it meets Austria at Martina. We’ll have the chancy to use our French, German, Italian and Romansh, and to spend ten days and…
I’ve ridden through Ulverston a few times, and always found it a friendly sort of place. It’s mainly known as the birthplace of Stan Laurel, who stands alongside Ollie in an irresistibly photographable town centre sculpture. (It’s yet another piece by the excellent Graham Ibbeson, whose popular figures I seem to cycle past a lot:…
The last day, all the way from the Fourth City, or perhaps the Forth City, up to the farthest-flung strand, literally, of Denmark. But quite not all the way for me. Like a surgeon in a faulty lift, my left ankle was not operating at the right level. So I thought it best to leave…
The longest day of the trip for Nigel, at 80 miles; the shortest day of the trip for me, as cycling any non-trivial distance on my damaged ankle was out of the question. I was pretty down about it all, though at least sitting on the train from Vinderup to Aalborg, I could stay dry…
It had to happen eventually: an injury on an End to End. Twenty-odd miles out of Aarhus I realised that my sore ankle tendon was getting worse. So bad that I decided to get the train for the remainder of today’s route: there was no way I’d make another fifty miles without further damage. My…