I’ve lived in York since 2011, so it’s about time I blogged about it. It’s a tourist Mecca of course, with a large and important religious building – the Minster – like Mecca. Though unlike Mecca, it has 365 pubs. (Actually the figure is more like 200, but it’s nice to think that a year’s…
Author: Rob Ainsley
Oxford 2: Time travel
More cycle route research in and around Oxford, my alma mater. It seems like only yesterday I was here, naive, foolish, and barely engaged with the real world. That’s because it was yesterday, on my first day of research.
Oxford 1: Cotswolds
Day researching cycle routes west of Oxford. Bright and breezy but cold and wet, and only a little lumpy. But that’s enough about me.
Newcastle: Bridges, tunnels, cake
Day in Newcastle on my disposable folder researching routes and facilities, ie tunnels, metro, cake.
Petersfield 3: Cricket, sharks
Final day investigating cycle routes in Hampshire. We visited the historic home of cricket, Broadhalfpenny Down, which excited me very much. Sorry for mentioning religion.
Petersfield 2: Butser busters
Another very nice half-day cycling the South Downs, on the East Hampshire Cycle Route. We got back to the hotel just as the heavy rain started, as forecast accurately by the Met Office. As opposed to the BBC website, which was hopeless as usual.
Petersfield 1: The Treachery of Images
Ace day researching cycle routes in the South Downs, down Hants way. None of your Northern mud here. It’s posh Home Counties mud.
Ladybower Reservoir: Red sky at night
Our annual between-Christmas-and-New-Year ride round Ladybower Reservoir, but I’m calling it ‘cycle route research’ to make it tax-deductible. Fine weather and a spectacular sunset which, it turned out, had to be best viewed from the Yorkshire Bridge Inn.
Hunmanby: Good spirits
Yorkshire being a sort-of-country in its own right, it was only a matter of time before we got a National Whisky. Wales has one after all: Penderyn, based in the Beacons and launched in 2004. And England – the nation bordering Yorkshire – has had St George’s, in Thetford, since 2006. But in May 2016,…
Saffron Walden: Cake stop
Cycle-cafe article research in Saffron Walden, which sounds like a singer-songwriter rather than a well-to-do Essex town. It has a Wetherspoon, a Waitrose, a castle, and quite a lot of cafes. Something for everyone, then.