Cycling adventures across Yorkshire, Britain and beyond
Yorkshire is a country – sorry, county – of superlatives. Of stuff that matters, anyway. The best beer, finest scenery, tallest people, most interesting phone boxes, oldest and highest pub. And – I was delighted to learn – the World’s Oldest Working Railway. Because in Hunslet, a suburb of Leeds, there’s been a train running…
Of England’s 32 Minsters, 13 are in Yorkshire. York’s is the best known, biggest, and obviously, best. Ripon and Beverley are familiar too; Hemingborough and Howden less so. Those have been joined in the last thirty years by newly-minsterised churches in Dewsbury, Doncaster, Rotherham, Halifax, Leeds and Hull. I can hear pub quizzers busy scribbling…
In 1984, Yorkshire had 56 coal mines. By 2015 that figure was zero. Little is left of the industry that defined much of the county’s community life and character, except for one vibrant, enduring legacy: a loathing of Margaret Thatcher and her government. But Barnsley can point to another legacy: Barnsley Main. The old entrance…
Another day researching birdspotting routes, this time on back lanes through woods filled with birdsong, and investigating two reserves noted for their birding possibilities: Pensthorpe and Sculthorpe, near Fakenham. (‘Do you like Fakenham?’ – ‘I don’t know, I’ve never faked one.’) The first two hours was a thoroughly lovely trundle along those quiet roads, where…
Identifying rare birds while riding is easy, even for beginner-spotters like me, if you know what to look for: a sixties couple with woolly hats and binoculars, standing at the side of the road, or sitting on a bench in a hide. They’ll have done all the hard work for you, locating and naming that…
Gainsborough House, Sudbury, is a cracker. The painter’s home, furnished in the style of the time, is a museum and gallery; behind it, a well-architected annexe is a spacious and airy art gallery and events space. I sat out in the garden under the same mulberry tree that Gainsborough knew, planted to provide food for…
The Painters Trail is a seventy-mile roam of Suffolk back lanes that follows the Stour Valley in the oily footsteps of some famous daubers, chiefly Constable and Gainsborough. From the saddle you can enjoy the same views they did over two hundred years ago – all virtually unchanged, except for electricity pylons, telegraph poles, housing…
In early 2023, the ‘Stonehenge of the North’ was being hyped in the media: a trio of neolithic earthworks by the village of Thornborough, east of Masham, on the flatlands between Yorkshire’s Dales and Moors. I couldn’t resist a folding-bike visit, enabled by the ongoing £2 flat bus fare scheme. The hyping came about because…
Every list of ‘quirky sights of Yorkshire’ includes the Druid’s Temple, a few miles west of Masham on the edge of the Dales. And every list then quickly stresses that IT’S NOT A REAL DRUIDS’ TEMPLE, but is a folly. It was built not by wise ancients in pointy hats and white robes, but by…
You know you’re getting old when the Grade II listed buildings are younger than you. And if, like me, you grew up in the East Riding – that flat, quiet, forgotten third of Yorkshire – then you might now be feeling geriatric. Because this very month, nine K8 phone boxes in and around Hull were…