Cycling adventures across Yorkshire, Britain and beyond
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 wrote an article on it for Cycling Plus magazine. You can read the online version of it at https://www.bikeradar.com/features/routes-and-rides/englands-six-highest-roads .) The exact summit heights are, and therefore identity…
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…
Another guidebook updating trip, this time to Wensleydale. The lower dale benefits from the wonderful Wensleydale Railway, a heritage line enthusiastically maintained by volunteers with a sequence of station buildings furnished in the style of various 1900s eras. Some of their rolling stock is so ancient that it offers lavish bike spaces, a vision of…
I’m updating a guidebook – the Bradt Slow Travel Guide to the Yorkshire Dales. The astute will realise this is something to do with travelling through the Yorkshire Dales, slowly. Which is perfect for cycling, perfect for me. So between now and Christmas I’ll be doing what I’d be doing anyway, except tax-deductibly. This week…
The wonderful solar system model on the York to Selby cycle path, which I blogged earlier this week, is not York’s only cyclable scale model of the planets. There’s another on the university campus, installed in 2016, in which the distance between planets is much more walkable thanks to a scale of 1 in 2…
To boldly go between York and Selby, on the flat car-free path that follows the old railway, is to travel the entire solar system. Because you pass a 1:575,872,239 scale model of the Sun and planets, a millennium initiative of York University, getting a vivid feel for just how empty space is. The sun is…