Cycling adventures across Yorkshire, Britain and beyond
Day 3 featured ‘book town’ Hay, a cyclist called Elgar who like me also composed a bit, Hereford glimpsed, pedestrian bridges that could double as fairground cakewalks, and an idyllic pub-camping spot. I was away early. The market in Hay-on-Wye was just setting up and most shops – which in Hay, means bookshops – were…
Day 2 featured a fence made of gravestones, a coach road that would make you sack your coach, biking barbers, a chance encounter, and a wasp sting not by a wasp. An early start. My puncture repair work was evidently successful: the back tyre was still firm this morning. I headed to Llangurig through the…
This is a leisurely cycle-camp down the 130-mile River Wye. (Route map below.) Day 1 featured a bit of Japan on a house, a pub Dylan Thomas never drank in, remote reservoirs, a puncture, and the source up in the mid-Welsh hills just a stone’s throw from that of the Severn. Please don’t throw stones…
Little Switzerland; Little Germany; Little Canada; Little Denmark; Little Holland. Yorkshire contains many miniature foreign countries, and I’ve cycled the lot. Which is most convincing? Answers revealed below. But first, today’s trip, in which I completed my globetrotting-at-home set with Thorne. The small town outside Doncaster is nicknamed ‘Little Holland’ for its supposed resemblance to…
‘BERYL BURTON OBE / Was a cycling phenomenon’, states the blue plaque in Morley town centre. The ‘Yorkshire housewife’ (as they called her then, instead of ‘cycling superstar’) indeed was. She dominated women’s road, track and time-trial cycling in Britain through the 1960s: almost unbeatable from 1959 to 1983, winning 90 UK championships and seven…
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…