Cycling adventures across Yorkshire, Britain and beyond
Two years ago I did Belgium End to End by doing it Side to Side. I love cycling the place because of its excellent cycle paths and its highbrow cultural experiences such as beer, chips, chocolate and comics. So now I’m doing it Top to Bottom. This will take me from Essen – not the…
The poetically named Gypsey Race is East Yorkshire’s most enigmatic watercourse. One that only works part-time, like me, and keeps disappearing unpredictably, also like me. It’s a winterbourne; it’s a chalk stream; and it’s a predictor of disaster. It’s part of the mystery behind the Wold Newton Triangle, Yorkshire’s equivalent of the one in Bermuda….
The Great War of 1914–18 resulted in the loss of almost 900,000 of Britain’s men. Every city, town and village suffered casualties. Well, not quite every village. Historians reckon 53 settlements in England (none in Scotland or Ireland, as it happens) saw all their men return. Of these ‘thankful villages’, as they’ve been dubbed, five…
A quick visit today to the village I grew up in, North Ferriby just outside Hull, to see what has put it on the map: the Ferriby Boats. We have a few claims to fame for a place of under 4,000 folk: Mariinsky dancer Xander Parish, weather presenter Alex Deakin, and anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce….
Julian’s Bower, at Alkborough in far-north-west Lincolnshire, is the only Julian’s Bower in England still called a Julian’s Bower. I cycled it today. A JB is a maze; technically, a labyrinth – a one-route turf path that winds its convoluted way within a circle to the centre. The concept wasn’t invented by the York one-way…
Fans of Ordnance Survey maps – particularly the 204 of the classic Landranger series that cover Britain – spend hours looking for oddities. Two neighbouring, separate villages, both called ‘Great Totham’ in Essex, for instance (map 178). Or a strange dry ‘aerial river’ snaking from Littleport to Shippea Hill in Cambridgeshire (map 143). Or the…
If Yorkshire was a clock face, the area roughly at half past four – the string of villages on the south bank of the Ouse – is one of its most obscure corners. And it’s a strange clock that I’m here to see. When I grew up, in North Ferriby just downstream outside Hull, I’d…
When asked where I’ve ridden in Britain, I’ve replied ‘everywhere except Skegness’. Well, I’ll have to find a new joke now, because I’ve finally cycled there. I went down the Lincolnshire coast from Cleethorpes via Mablethorpe, and very nice it was too. In parts. A few parts. After hearing bitterns at the Far Ings nature…
The Monsal Trail is one of Britain’s wowest-factor bike paths, stretching eight car-free miles between Bakewell and Annoyingly Not Quite Buxton. Once a mainline railway, it’s excitingly fitted out with half-a-dozen tunnels and several bridges, and offers some lofty views down over the Wye Valley. (Not that Wye. This Wye.) All this is fairly recent….
Lovely easy cycling today under blue skies, on two longish car-free cycle paths. Once they were steamy with locomotives; today they were steamy with cyclist breath on a bright but very chilly day. I cycled past frosty-looking sheep to get on to the Tissington a couple of miles from the hostel. It was early and…