Excellent first day of route research on the Speyside Trail up in the Scottish Highlands.
Author: Rob Ainsley
Tan Hill Inn: Drink up
Yorkshire reckons it’s got the best of everything. All the stuff that counts anyway. France may do better philosophy, Germany engineering, and the Philippines know how to do nail bars. But for the best cricket, the best beer, the best scenery, the best people… well, it’s got to be the broad acres. (There are famously…
Beverley: Wolds apart
Beverley (picture), at the edge of the gentle Wolds, is one of our great secrets: a fine, characterful Georgian market town with its own brand of Yorkshireness. While it has plenty in common with the county’s other market towns such as Richmond – a fondness for turning potentially pedestrianised-showcase market squares into car parks, for…
Market Weighton: Tall stories
A key to understanding Yorkshire is that nothing else, anywhere, will ever be as good as it is in God’s Own Country. (That’s what Yorkshire people call Yorkshire. It’s not what God calls it, but obviously His opinion doesn’t count as much as, say, Fred Trueman’s.) Think, for example, of the farmer whose land straddled…
Cuba 37: Havana
My last week in Cuba, waiting out the time between finishing my End to End and my flight home, had the feeling of marking time. The bike wasn’t really involved, which explained my limited enthusiasm. I walked everywhere, mostly between cheap bars and tourist lobster restaurants. Several of my intended big-ticket attractions (Capitol [pic], Motor…
Cuba 30: Viñales
With the End to End done, but two weeks left before my flight home, it all felt like being at school after final exams but before the end of term. From Fri 24 Apr to Tue 28 Apr I explored Viñales, a tourist town surrounded by spectacular lush scenery of mogotes, sugarloaf hills (pic). I…
Cuba 25: San Juan y Martinez to La Fe
The final day – of the End to End part of my Cuban trip, anyway. I set out in the dark from my miserable little hutch in San Juan and rolled cautiously through the black predawn. There were three cafes open in the town, and several people about. So at the first I had a…
Cuba 24: San Diego de los Baños to San Juan y Martinez
The penultimate End to End day, so I was keen to get on with it. I was out before sun-up, my bike twinklingy under-illuminated by three-euro mini-LED lights, picked up from an Albert Heijn in Amsterdam historically, and recently rediscovered in my tool bag. It was quite special to be sliding silently through the quiet…
Cuba 23: Soroa to San Diego de los Baños
After two lovely and memorable days, today was a rather routine, even dee you double-ell. I’m near the End of the End to End, and I want to finish things and get on with the rest of my life, assuming there is one. My lovely casa in Soroa supplied a stylish fruit-based breakfast (pic), sculpted…
Cuba 22: Las Terrazas to Soroa
A very short riding day, as planned – in fact I spent more time having breakfast than I did cycling. My fabulous little casa did me proud, serving up lots of fresh local mango juice (the surplus of which I diverted into my water bottles), omelette, bread, local honey and local coffee. Then, a local…