Cycling adventures across Yorkshire, Britain and beyond
Day 5 of the KAW involved plenty of lovely Ridgeway, an ancient burial site with a poignant modern twist, a bizarre split church, and the completion of the circle back at Reading. The railtrail swiftly got us from Marlborough back to the route at Ogbourne St George, where we resumed our pleasant eastward progress on…
Day 4 of the KAW involved Stonehenge at solstice, bangs and crashes on Salisbury Plain, giant white horses, a canalside pub, mystical Avebury, a man carrying a dog to his ear, and the fabulous Ridgeway. From Amesbury we took a rather roundabout offroad way to Stonehenge. We’d forgotten it was midsummer day: later in the…
Day 3 of the KAW involved more South Downs Way, Alfred’s statue in Winchester, more muttering about bad surfaces and dull views, and the windy hilltop fort of Old Sarum. Breakfast at the Sustainability Centre was fruity and healthy, but I still enjoyed it. We shuddered at the memory of yesterday’s surfaces, much as our…
Day 2 of the KAW involved a tame wild swim, more woodland trails, elevated heaths and sunken lanes, an alcohol-free Devil’s Punchbowl, a pub with an internal border, some bridleway-dodging, and the cradle of first-class cricket. It was a cool and cloudy day – a relief after yesterday’s heat. Back lanes to Farnham revealed the…
Day 1 of the KAW involved offroad trails through woods and heaths and alongside water, plus unburnt cakes, sauna-like heat, a secret cafe, and (trigger warning) two references to nudity. The KAW has little to do with King Alfred, apart from starting and finishing at his statue in Winchester. Well, I’m starting and finishing in…
‘Night riding has a strange fascination of its own,’ opined a recent Cycling Plus article. ‘It’s not about the views, for obvious reasons. The landscapes you explore here are purely psychological. Spookily empty ‘main’ roads. Unpeopled, echoing town centres. Glimpsed nocturnal creatures. Starlit skies (or perhaps inky drizzle). Owls. Somewhere, someone’s on-bike sound system plays….
‘A wild-swims-cycle-route photoshoot’ sounds more glamorous than it is. No film crew, make-up tents, Michelin-star cuisine, or five-star hotels for me and photographer Joe. Just him on his Condor gravel bike toting a camera bag, and me on my tourer carting trunks and wetsuit. We stayed in pub rooms, ate fish and chips, and I…
I just spent a few days exploring Utrecht, inside and outside the city, for another article. Even by Dutch standards, this is a bike-friendly place: over 60% of city-centre trips are pedalled, and outstanding cycleways – wide, smooth, continuous, and with priority at junctions – are everywhere. Nobody knows how many kilometres of bike path…
With the End to End completed, today I cycled from St Vith to the train station at Spa to head home. To my delight, I realised I could do the entire 35-mile trip on the RAVeL network: Belgium’s excellent paved, wide, smooth, car-free cycleway system, generally on towpaths or railtrails. Most of the day there…
I completed my Belgian End-to-End with a 17-mile hop to the border this morning. Well, Belgium’s pretty good at handling hops. It was all very German feeling, of course: the look and feel of the houses, chalets and forests, hilly landscapes, and car dealerships. The ‘official’ easternmost settlement is Krewinkel, a village that was described…