Yesterday was heavy rain all day so I stayed in Tours and just cycled – well, aquaplaned mostly – round town, exploring the very decent bike infrastructure. This morning, with my new-found knowledge of the city’s layout, I splashed my way to the doctor to show off my impressive collection of insect bites, and colourfully…
Author: Rob Ainsley
Loire 5: Candes to Tours
Today was one long sequence of gentle, quiet paths through woods, farms and river plains. Not much happened, but it happened enjoyably. With heavy rain forecast I booked a hostel in Tours for tonight, a mere 59km away according to the sign outside last night’s campsite. An hour along the path, all delightfully quiet, Tours…
Loire 4: Ponts-de-Cé to Candes
A good full day of easy riverside riding today, involving all the Loire tropes: cathedrals and chateaux, latticework bridges, bike-friendly campsites, wineries, giant wine bottles, tripe sausages, crushed Renaults, and nuclear power stations. My campsite last night was only five miles from Angers, a fine cathedral and castle city, so I nipped up for a…
Loire 3: Nantes to Ponts-de-Cé
After two short days I thought I’d better get some miles in, and with half-decent weather forecast, planned a substantial day of sixty-odd miles. It was fairly easy, thanks to the Loire path being well-signed, flat, smooth, and with cars outnumbered by artisan boulangeries. It would have been even better if some of them had…
Loire 2: Paimbœuf to Nantes
When I started my mug of Yorkshire tea this morning it was bright sunshine. By the time I finished it was torrential rain. And it’s not a very large mug. Yes, the weather has abruptly turned for the worse, like a hitherto friendly drunk in the pub who suddenly takes offence at some imagined insult….
Loire 1: Saint-Nazaire to Paimbœuf
What do cycling writers do on holiday, when they’re not writing about a cycle tour? They go on a cycle tour. Hoping they might be able to write about it later on. But I’ve had the Loire Valley on my radar for a long time, and at last I’m doing it: 600km of flat, easy…
Bishop Wilton: The famous secret village
It may sound like a medieval church reformer, but Bishop Wilton – thanks to an article on unknown hidden-gem villages in the Sunday Times last weekend – has suddenly become East Yorkshire’s most famous secret place. So I couldn’t resist the excuse to visit it this sunny day, as part of a scenic amble round…
Lowther Hill: Scotland’s biggest climb on the radar
Scotland’s highest cyclable tarmac road is, delightfully, closed to motor traffic. It’s the access to a NATS air-traffic control radar station and suite of comms towers up the top of Lowther Hill. They’re a couple of miles’ ascent from Wanlockhead, Scotland’s highest village – which, surprisingly for some, is not in the Highlands but down…
NCN7: Killin me softly, and a date with Callander
The twentyish miles between Killin, on the end of Loch Tay, and Trossachs-gateway Callander, are some of my favourite bits of the National Cycle-route Network. NCN7 runs, and occasionally stumbles over rocks, nearly 550 sometimes questionable miles in its entirety from Sunderland to Inverness. I’ve done this section of it a couple of times before,…
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch to Gorsafawddachaidraigddanheddogleddollônpenrhynareurdraethceredigion 2: Steep hills and barmy bridges
Resuming my trip between place names so long it may be quicker to ride it than say it, I set off from Porthmadog this grey morning after surviving a brush with Storm Lilian. A wet, and hairy, brush. I enjoyed cycling across the Cob, a train/road/bike path causeway over marshland overlooked by hills. Then it…