Cycling adventures across Yorkshire, Britain and beyond
After all those browns and greys of my old Soviet hotel, the cobalt blue sky of the morning came as a relief. I wondered why the back road, suggested as a quiet way out of town by my phone’s basic mapping app, was so busy. The answer soon appeared, a stark grey building in the…
Is there a guidebook to Slovakian bus shelters? If not, I could write one – I seemed to spend much of my time today inside them, dodging sudden flurries of rain, sleet or snow. It was a long and sometimes humdrum day with a fair bit of tedious road riding along ‘Cycle Route 002’, which…
Sometimes, even though you’re going round in circles, you still have a constant headwind. Getting out of Trnava on this blustery, drizzly morning wasn’t fun. The road northwest to Piešťany goes through flat, empty, humdrum farmland. No reason to get the camera out, and anyway it might have blown away. But a savoury croissant and…
An easy, pleasant day across largely flat rural landscapes to Trnava, the ‘Slovak Rome’ (because of its churches, not pasta restaurants). It was a succession of characteristic Slovakian views: green woods; farms; quiet villages; cement factories. And Tescos. I left Malacky through the deserted parkland round the currently unoccupied Pálffy Mansion, former seat of the…
After a bleary night of interrupted dozes on the long train from Amsterdam to Vienna, and a local morning train from Vienna to the village of Angern an der March, it was time to start cycling at last. Angern sits on the March/Morava river, the border between Austria and Slovakia. This was the old Iron…
After three years of itchy feet and cooling my heels – pandemic restrictions have been bad for mental health, but also podiatry – I’m doing another international End to End at last. This one’s Slovakia, a country I’ve been through briefly a few times and liked, so I’m back to do it properly. Which, for…
I’ve cycled most of Yorkshire’s canals, from the aquatic urban highway of the Leeds and Liverpool, to the backwaters of the Pocklington. But I’d never done the Huddersfield Narrow, arguably the most impressive of the county’s lot. Today I put that right with my friend Mark (who’s planning a remarkable British travel odyssey of his…
A bit of informal route research today round the Wye Valley. I’d come here intending to ride through the recently opened (2021) Tidenham Tunnel, the vital link in the lovely five-mile Wye Valley Greenway. I started with a sortie across the (old) Severn Bridge and back, over its dramatic 1.6km cyclable crossing (including the Aust…
A lazy day of exploring the hilly country west of Hereford today, around the Golden Valley. I headed down the railtrail south from the town and struck west into the uplands, overlooked dramatically by Hay Bluff. (On the other side is the awesome Gospel Pass, which I rode on my Welsh End to End in…
On 30 Jun 1921, Alfred Watkins made an astonishing discovery while out walking in Herefordshire. He realised that any two points of ancient, mystical significance – Stonehenge or Lord’s, say – were always connected by a straight line. He called these ‘ley lines’, and detailed his insights in his classic 1925 book The Old Straight…