A day that demonstrated the value of keeping the faith – and I thought I didn’t have enough to justify doing this trip – because at one point it seemed hard going into the wind with much too far to go. But I got there. Maybe there’s more to me than the doubters, such as…
Author: Rob Ainsley
Camino 1: Pamplona to Los Arcos
I walked the beginning of the Camino de Santiago from St Jean-Pied-de-Port to Pamplona a few years ago with my my chum Gary. We were distracted by the tapas and some Swiss hikers, and we got no further. I’d wanted to complete it ever since, but on a bike. So here I was at Portal…
Bealach na Bà: Height of achievement
The road west over the hills to Applecross, on the north-west coast of Scotland, is Britain’s longest steep hill. Simon Warren’s book on Britain’s top 100 cycling hills rated every one out of ten; this one rated eleven. And today, fulfilling a long-held ambition, I rode it. The hill is Bealach na Bà, usually translated…
Dunwich Dynamo: Long ride to the dawn
I just rode the Dunwich Dynamo, the annual 120-mile mass night bike ride from London to the Suffolk coast, which took place on Saturday night and Sunday morning. Here’s how it all unfolded… Saturday 7.30pm Arrive at the Pub on the Park, London Fields, Hackney. The building appears to float in sea of cyclists. Perhaps…
Lee Valley: Britain’s lowest-headroom underpass?
Is this the lowest-headroom cycle bridge in Britain*? It’s on National Cycle Route 1 following the Lee Valley north, in Walthamstow marshes. The cycle path ducks under a railway bridge at Coppermill Lane and leaves you just five feet of headroom, or 152cm – that’s about the minimum required width for a cycle lane. (The…
P2G 4: Newark to Goole
From Newark up to Goole was a flat trundle alongside the Trent. Pleasant cycling on a warm morning, but the Danube it’s not. The Trent valley consists largely of power stations – you keep expecting the Super Mario Brothers to pop up out of the cooling towers – relieved by the odd high-security mental institution….
P2G 3: Leamington to Newark
A long hot haul up the Fosse Way today. Unfortunately, the speed I cycle, I couldn’t even get this ford to splash me with cool water. Ab Kettleby is a nondescript little village near Melton Mowbray. But it’s Britain’s top village – alphabetically – thanks to the way computers sort their gazetteers. Staying at a…
P2G 2: Bath to Leamington Spa
After living there a dozen years, but leaving in 1999, it was funny being in Bath for a night again. Half the shops I knew had gone, replaced by chainstores or upmarket shopping courts. Rather like meeting an old partner who has now married someone richer and more successful, who is very polite, but has…
P2G 1: Poole to Bath
Set off from Poole at 9.30ish, having taken a ludicrously early train from Waterloo. At Wimborne I dropped in on the Model Town. This is a one-tenth replica of the town as it was in the 1950s. You can walk up the streets and lanes and imagine being sixty feet tall. The shops have little…
Britain 19: London to Dover
I wasn’t looking forward to my final day. The forecast was for showers, followed by heavy rain, followed by showers. Well, the forecast was wrong. It was heavy rain all day. So today was just a long, long day at the office, into unremitting grey drizzle, with lorries booming past on the A20 in a…