Another glorious day of bluesky coastal cycling, a day of space and air and seasmells and freshness and fish and chips. And some lager drinking with Newcastle fans. From Ashington I headed east out to NCN1, which runs picturesquely up the coast. It was (mostly) fab, a series of backroads and not-too-muddy-tracks and paths that…
Author: Rob Ainsley
F2B 3: Durham to Ashington
A delightful day of windless sunshine up the flattish north-east coast. After the headwinds and hills of the previous two days, my bike felt like an electric-assist model. I struck north from Durham this morning to Chester-le-Street, where I joined the Coast to Coast route east to Sunderland. On the rare bit of scenic path…
F2B 2: Whitby to Durham
Lots of hills and headwinds today, but I didn’t swear once. That once was at about 4 o’clock. From the hostel it was all downhill into Whitby, some 100m away. Very steeply downhill, as you can see. The road, Donkey Track, is marked ‘Unsuitable for Motors’. Indeed. At the bottom, this photo suggests that the…
F2B 1: Flamborough to Whitby
This is the latest Rhyming Coast to Coast: Flamborough to Bamburgh, F2B. Pedants among you will protest that it isn’t a proper Coast to Coast as it doesn’t cross the country, and merely follows a shoreline. But they rhyme and it looks fun, and I’d rather be happy than right any day. I’ll tell you…
Isle of Man 2: Douglas to Point of Ayre (to Douglas)
So, having started yesterday, this is our final day. We rode up the road that serves as part of the TT (‘Tourist Trophy’) course, the legendary annual motorbike race much loved for its lethal danger, which has been won by legendary riders such as Joey Dunlop and George Formby. On a previous trip with Tim…
Isle of Man 1: (Douglas to) Calf Sound to Douglas
I was here in the Isle of Man to cycle its End to End – a modest few dozen miles that, frankly, you could do without stopping – with my friend Nigel. We came from Belfast by ferry having just completed the Northern Ireland End to End, a comparative ultra-marathon at 193 miles. The Isle…
N Ireland 4: Ballycastle to Giant’s Causeway (to Derry)
A short hop into headwind and drizzle to the notional end of the End to End: Giant’s Causeway. The natural wonder consists of 40,000 hexagonal columns of basalt – the same sort of volcanic stuff the moon is made of – looking like a giant’s clumsily-laid garden patio. Visiting by bike isn’t all that convenient…
N Ireland 3: Straid to Ballycastle
Yet more tailwinds helping us on to Larne, where a shouty, belligerent local was furious that we didn’t follow his unsolicited directions. It was the last unpleasant thing of the day, though: from here is one of the loveliest stretches of coastal road in the United Kingdom that Mr Shouty was so keen on belonging…
N Ireland 2: Portaferry to Straid
We circumnavigated the bottom of scenic Ards peninsula, and north through shore towns with Union Flags and kerbstones painted red, white and blue. We took and coffee and light lunch in Newtownards, a friendly little loyalist town, with its pipe band braying away benignly in the market-stall square. A local chap admired my Raleigh. ‘Made…
N Ireland 1: (Dundalk to) Cranfield Point to Portaferry
Whatever your position on its relation to Great Britain or Ireland, and whether you call it a country or a region or a province, Northern Ireland has its own football team, which is enough to justify it for me as a standalone End to End country. I did it with my chum Nigel, on a…