An inspiring view for the otherwise misty, blurred morning. We went out just after 7am, walking up to the ridge to see the chunky bits of the Wall and the sweeping views. Stoked up by a hostel breakfast we rode off to Vindolanda, which turned out to be closed, so hacked back along narrow lanes…
Author: Rob Ainsley
Hadrian 2: Carlisle to Once Brewed
Another grey, mild morning as we slip quietly through the morning park east. A local man with a dog told us how high the floods of 2000 were: right up here, he said, his arm at head-height. Quiet backroads and lanes led, with a few hills, to Brampton. We sat out some light patchy drizzle…
Hadrian 1: Bowness to Carlisle
Bowness-on-Solway – to distinguish it from the one on Windermere not far away in the Lakes – is the beginning of Hadrian’s Cycleway, the bike route that nominally follows the famous Roman wall across north England from here to Newcastle. The ceremonial start is here, at this bus shelt… er, grand pavilion. We’d arrived here…
Reivers 3: Kielder to Carlisle
Having retrieved our bikes from the hostel shed – from a pile of 14 or so – we headed back south along the lakeside and on to National Cycle Route 10, ie a gravelly track, for 13 miles, across remote moorland to Newcastleton. This stretch west of the Water feels remote: a very few practical…
Reivers 2: Bellingham to Kielder
A short day today – just as well, after last night’s beer and wine and Radio 3; that Wagner must have given me a fuzzy head – with our destination Kielder and its hostel just 20 grey, damp but easy miles up the road. Kielder – originally built for workers constructing the reservoir, Britain’s most…
Reivers 1: Newcastle to Bellingham
With my friend Tim I’m doing a double Coast to Coast: the Reivers Route from Newcastle cross-country to Carlisle, returning back to Newcastle by Hadrian’s Cycleway. We had a convivial evening with Tim’s friends in an Ouseburn pub followed by a cosy Travelodge room with four occupants: Tim, me, and our bikes – his ancient…
Newcastle: Angel of the North, and other Gormleys
I was in Newcastle this week, with bike, obviously, researching routes, obviously. I like Newcastle, and the way it makes me feel so over-dressed and under-tattooed. More about the Toon soon, but first, the Angel of the North (right). Antony Gormley’s iconic statue is three miles or so south of the Tyne bridges, a straight…
R2R 3: Northallerton to Ravenscar
If day 1 was the Lakes, and day 2 the Dales, then day 3 was the North York Moors (above). This is just about my favourite bike-touring part of the world: a compact, beautiful landscape, where 15 minutes’ swearing gets you up to remote sheepy solitude, but three minutes’ glorious freewheel down gets you to…
R2R 2: Kendal to Northallerton
Glorious cycling with breathtaking scenery today (lots of this sort of stuff, above), in lovely weather: the forecasters were Michael-Fish-wrong, having promised daylong showers which never materialised, rather like the payments for the freelance work I do for Sky Arts. From Kendal it’s all up and down stuff to Sedbergh, which is STILL IN YORKSHIRE…
R2R 1: Ravenglass to Kendal
This trip is another Coast to Coast, along a route that simply looked fun on the map: Ravenglass (out west, in Cumbria, a bit north of Barrow) to Ravenscar (out east, a bit north of Scarborough). Not exactly rhyming, but maybe someone knows a technical term for when two similar things begin the same way,…