Cycling adventures across Yorkshire, Britain and beyond
Britain’s favourite 20th-century poet (whose centenary is in 2022) wasn’t initially impressed by Hull. Nice and flat for cycling, was Philip Larkin’s faint-praise damn. But he lived, worked and (early on, at least) rode his bike here for thirty years until his death in 1985. The city inspired his best work. And it’s work which…
Britain’s best phone box is in East Yorkshire. The Wolds village of Millington boasts a disused K6 – the standard red cast-iron British phone booth – refurbished as a free bike repair hub, complete with tools, spares, lube and track pump. Quick tune-up of brakes while passing by on the Way of the Roses? Day-ride…
Three relaxed days exploring ‘Britain’s first seaside resort’ in the winter sunshine. It boasts Britain’s longest bench, a science pioneer, Yorkshire’s fourth or perhaps sixth largest natural lake, lush ravines, Caribbean beaches and more. Caribbean? Well, the locals call it ‘Scarbados’, among other less complimentary terms (like many British seaside towns, Scarborough has its share…
Filey Brigg is one of Yorkshire’s small-scale geological gems: a natural jetty of rock sticking out into the North Sea which, I was pleased to find, you can cycle along, right to the end. If ‘you’ are Danny Macaskill, anyway. If you’re me, you can cycle halfway along, after which the hitherto flat grassy clifftop…
East, West, Yorkshire’s best. We have everything here, including the very first bit of the Greenwich Prime Meridian: zero longitude, the dividing line between East and West. It makes its first landfall after the North Pole at a caravan park in Tunstall, on the windy Holderness coast. Just a few miles of flat farmland later,…
Dumfries and Galloway is said to have the most roads in Britain per head of population. There’s certainly a lot of empty tarmac. Often the network of single-track, untrafficked lanes winding through the gently hilly landscape can feel like cycle tracks. This area is known for its Dark Skies, and is a great spot for…
I’ve been to both Britain’s shortest place name (Ae) and longest (North Leverton with Habblesthorpe). What Ae lacks in consonants, it makes up with umpteen bike trails in the forest – and wind turbines. I’m going to spell it ‘Æ’, making it a single-letter place name, like Y in France and Å in Norway. (Scotland…
The Solway Firth is hard to tear yourself away from, though that’s because of the quicksand rather than any scenic splendour. Today’s afternoon spin south of Dumfries down by the River Nith was a bit samey, in fact. I spent most of it trying to shake off the one hill that dominated the view, and…
We all have ups and downs, but a paternoster – half-escalator, half-lift – has both at the same time. Britain now has only two or three working examples of this slow-motion, low-tech version of the Star Trek transporter beam… and one of those is in Sheffield University’s Arts Tower, appropriately the home of their architecture…
It was tempting, having finished most of my research, to take the easy option today: one that would involve simply dawdling round Kidderminster, maybe having a leisurely breakfast and lunchtime pint, and getting an early train home. Then I asked myself: would this be the behaviour of a cycle-route research professional? I decided it would…