Cycling adventures across Yorkshire, Britain and beyond
Brooklands Museum is a motor-sport Mecca, full of racing memorabilia, with bus and plane museums too. But it also has a very good little bike museum, mainly vintage Raleighs, and I enjoyed poking round it today. The museum itself is conveniently accessed by bike, traffic-free from Weybridge station (though their website irritatingly does not mention…
In the Top 10 of world river cycle paths, the Thames comes about 86th. Because most of it isn’t cyclable. However, the stretches between Staines and Putney, and a few miles round Greenwich, are fabulous. For these bits, and for some canals and cycleways round the centre of London, I was serving as unofficial guide…
‘A journey of a thousand miles’, Lao Tzu said, ‘begins with a single malt. But a pint will do.’ Medieval pilgrims en route to the Holy Lands would, it’s said, start off with an ale or two at Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, a pub that’s been refreshing travellers since 1189. (It claims to be…
Heavy rain scaled down today’s plans. Less emphasis on distance, and more emphasis on avocado and salmon breakfasts on sourdough toasts in the lovely cafe in Castle Ashby. It was already drizzling when we struck east along the Nene and through the Wetlands, which were living up to their name, except perhaps the ‘-lands’ bit….
A gentle, pleasant, sunny day of Northants countryside: thatchy villages with churches and cottages in orange-red stone, none quite fetching enough for a picture postcard, but all pleasant. Though with stamps the price they are these days, that was just as well. We headed west from the centre along the River Nene, which is pronounced…
The place still makes a few boots and shoes, none of them for cycling though. But on Day 1 of my route research around Northampton, the boot was on the other foot: my gravel foot, not my road bike foot. Having paused to admire the Guildhall, and come away from the tourist office in the…
I was in Birmingham to investigate a cycle cafe – Gorilla, in King’s Heath – and had a chance to ride a few stretches of bike path during my spin round the city. Many of these bike paths were sparkling examples of the genre, because they were full of broken glass. Birmingham must be the…
Torpenhow Hill in Lancashire is sometimes said to the most redundantly named thing in Britain, because all four elements (tor, pen, how, hill) mean ‘hill’. But anything Lancashire can do, Yorkshire can do better. Lake Semerwater, just south of Bainbridge in Wensleydale, also has a quadruple name: ‘lake-sea-mere-water’, each element meaning exactly (or to be…
Jeremy Clarkson calls Buttertubs Pass one of his favourite roads, but that won’t put me off. Because Buttertubs is, indeed, one of Yorkshire’s most impressive cycling experiences. And therefore England’s. And arguably the world’s, though you’d have to be very argumentative to go that far. The road scrambles its way north from Hawes in Wensleydale…
Both the 1980s and 2020s TV settings of All Creatures Great and Small, James Herriot’s heartwarming tales of a vet’s life in mid-1900s Yorkshire, were shot mainly in Askrigg and the Dales. But Herriot himself – real name Alf Wight – in fact lived and practised in Thirsk. Nothing about the town is familiar to…