Author: Rob Ainsley

Stats define us: dress size, batting average, salary. And when suspension bridges get together for a night out, they judge themselves against their peers by socially competing about the length of their main spans. When the mighty Humber Bridge opened in 1981, it was the longest single-span suspension bridge in the world, with towers 1410m…

I did the Camel Trail today. The scenic Cornish railtrail follows the Camel Estuary and ends up majestically in Padstow, England’s fish-restaurant capital. (As in, ‘expensive, with a capital F’.) It’s said to be England’s most popular family-cycling route, with half a million users a year. It was sunny and warm all day and the…

Bristol’s tumbledown district of Totterdown has one of Britain’s steepest streets; arguably, a steeper-feeling hill even than Fford Pen Llech‘s 40-per-center in Harlech. The bottom few metres of Vale St, not far from Bristol Temple Meads station, are somewhere around 43%–45%. They come at the end of a shortish, straight descent that feels like about…

Ask a French non-cyclist to name a cycling hill and they’d come up with one of the mighty mountain passes in the Tour: Mont Ventoux, Iseran, Alpe d’Huez, Galibier, Aubisque, Tourmalet… places associated with great feats of endurance and determination. Try it in England and, after a lot of umming and ahing, they’d suggest that…

Britain’s canals have to perform various acrobatics as they trickle their way round the country: they leap over rivers, burrow under granite massifs, stair-jump up and down locks, and even beam chunks of themselves in tanks up and down. But one of their most subtly surprising tricks is in west London, somewhere between Park Royal…

The smallest ferry crossings are often the most interesting. For instance, most souls these days go to Hades on a thousand-lane motorway, with six-million-year delays en route. But cyclists can still go in the traditional way, as travellers did in Ancient Greece, on Charon’s little skiff across the Styx. It’s a much cosier, more personal…

Sigmund Freud would have had all sorts to say about Netherton Tunnel, on the Birmingham canal system. Going through it with a bike is a challenging experience. Not physically, but psychologically: it’s 2768m of arrow-straight pitch-darkness. Your only point of reference once inside is the pinprick of light in the distance, piercing thinly like Venus…

Here’s a place where the waves rule Britannia. Holy Island is connected to the mainland by a kilometre and a half of tarmac road. Twice a day, the sea gradually rolls in over the marshy surrounding sands and envelops the causeway. It’s rising damp with a vengeance. Lindisfarne becomes Wholly Island. The best way to…

Another of Britain’s unconvincing candidates for ‘Original Roman Road surface’. Blackpool Bridge and Blackstone Edge are the others. Wade’s Causeway is fabulous cycling country near Goathland, in the North York Moors. South of the village, follow signs to the ‘Roman Road (footpath)’. The lane becomes a bridleway, which becomes a footpath by the time you…

Some hills, like wasps, seem to serve no function other than to cause pain. Cycle in certain parts of Devon, which swarms with pointless little stinging ascents, and you’ll know what we mean. The North York Moors is also a hive of activity for makers of ‘1 in 3’ road signs, but you are richly…