By ferry – especially when you’re cycling off it – is a great way to arrive in St Malo (pic). Its stern, grey, granitic old walled town centre is famous, though it holds unpleasant memories for me, and always looks to me like the backdrop to a harrowing black and white film set in World…
Author: Rob Ainsley
France 0: Portsmouth
The obvious way to get to St Malo with a bike is on the ferry from Portsmouth. The place reminds me a lot of my native Hull, being a gritty town with an underachieving football team and overachieving criminals, but with the major plus of being a port, ie a fast getaway to anywhere else….
Speyside 3: Straight to mouth
Final day of route research on the Speyside Trail, finishing at the mouth not far from Elgin. Which, incidentally, has a distillery.
Speyside 2: Spirit of cycling
Day of whisk… er, route research in distillery country. I mean, Speyside.
Speyside 1: Takes a lot of bottle
Excellent first day of route research on the Speyside Trail up in the Scottish Highlands.
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…