Author: Rob Ainsley

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…

Another of Britain’s unconvincing candidates for ‘Original Roman Road surface’. Blackpool Bridge and Wade’s Causeway are the others. Blackstone Edge is up in the Pennines, near the highest point of the M62 as it vaults the moors. It’s a bridleway, so is cyclable, but the stones can be slippery even in dry weather. It’s just…

In England, we have Mam Tor, the shivering mountain, which prevents a similarly intrepid motorised passage from Sheffield to Chapel-en-le-Frith. But you can cycle it, and inspect first hand its unique collapsed 2km-long road that looks more like an earthquake zone than the Peak District. Before it became tarmac blancmange, it used to be the…

What is the oldest road you can cycle on in Britain? Oldest actual surface, that is, not just general route. People have been trudging across the Ridgeway for instance, across England’s billowing chalky south, for many thousands of years. But the specific lines taken varied from year to year, even journey to journey. What we’re…