Here’s a Roman Road with the kind of beeline straightness you associate with those ironing-board landscapes south of the Severn-Trent line – but with the rugged verticality of the North. A Roman Road fit for a Yorkshireman. Via Virilis. You can just imagine Fred Trueman’s eighty-greats-grandfather holding forth over an amphora of Ovis Niger ale:…
Author: Rob Ainsley
Debenham: The 1km-long ford
Britain abounds in a peculiar type of shallow ‘ford’ that stretches the definition to great lengths – lengths such as 100m or more. Unlike a conventional ford, in this sort you go along, not across, the watercourse. It’s an uneasy jobshare between road and stream, with small fish temporarily accompanying you on your journey. Thanks to…
Wales 5: Caernarfon to Holyhead
I was out, with a quick farewell circuit of the castle, by 8ish. Today was sun sun sun at last, and Anglesey looked serene and bright over the saturated blue of the strait. I was soon across the Menai old suspension bridge, a compactly impressive thing in fat bricks. I cycled across followed byimpatient overtakers….
Wales 4: Corris to Caernarfon
A better day all round, except for the discovery that my glasses had disappeared. (Left in Corris YH? Bizarre. Another victim of beer amnesia?) The morning ride, out into the misty hills. Green steep sides, sheep, square and stern slate houses. A long climb up a stony path, frankly unsuitable for touring bikes as well…
Wales 3: Rhayader to Corris
A bad, testing, but ultimately not unrewarding, day. I had my brake blocks replaced at Rhayader’s local bike shop and, to the ripping-off sound of velcro the size of a tablecloth, was rushed £22. I set off back into the rain……and it rained and rained and rained all day, non stop, a wall of water,…
Wales 2: Merthyr Tydfil to Rhayader
I was off by 7.45am into a miserable, nagging, repetitive drizzle. It was like a failing marriage. A convoluted series of paths, roads; a few good runs on cinder railtrails; grimy backdrops of misted hills; more drab housing… a world of grey and drained green. Eventually I came out at Ponsticill, the reservoir, ringed by…
Wales 1: Cardiff to Merthyr Tydfil
Not great weather. The air was softly textured with drizzle, so fine it enveloped me like a hangover. Though I also had a hangover, the product of a convivial stay in Bath last night, which enveloped me like drizzle. It wasn’t cold, or warm, or dry, or humid. But it was grey. Cardiff looked grim;…
Baths 6: Bath, Scotland
[A lot happened after our final European twin, Aix-en-Provence, in July 1999. We returned home with the cycling leg of the Baths tour completed, and spent a few months backpacking round places called Bath in Canada, the US, Barbados, Jamaica and St Kitts-Nevis. We managed to cycle in a few of them. We then spent…
Baths 5: Aix-en-Provence, France
[After Káposvar, we cycled out of Hungary and through Slovenia and Croatia to meet up with a friend. We then found our way across Switzerland to Lyon, and followed the Rhône down the final European twin: Aix-en-Provence, once the home of van Gogh, whose images strikingly illuminate the place.] Thanks to the generosity of the…
Baths 4: Káposvar, Hungary
[From Braunschweig we dawdled our way through southern Germany, dropping on friends in Miesbach south of Munich, and followed the classic bits of the Danube riverside cycle path from Passau. We got as far as Esztergom before turning south to Budapest, and then headed for our third twin, Káposvar, via the flatlands of Lake Balaton.]…