Author: Rob Ainsley

An action-packed day in Northumbria, more eventful than the mileage suggests. I passed Warkworth’s imposing castle (pic), one of many on this rugged coast. Most date from the 14th to the 16th centuries, a time of border wars, when Berwick was perhaps a bit more desirable a possession than nowadays. This is an underrated, monumentally…

Groggy from another cooked breakfast of questionable local provenance, I headed for Stanley. I eventually found the Durham to Stanley railway path, and made good progress, listening to Mozart’s late symphonies on my barbag disco. Then I realised the path was actually going to another, different, wrong, Stanley. Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten…

A bumper hostel breakfast, all ingredients local. Except for the grapefruit, cereal, butter, toast, jam and milk. The water was regionally sourced though. And the tea was Taylor’s Yorkshire – grown, presumably, on the the lofty tea plantations of Dalby Forest. The road north from Helmsley took me up and up into the clouds, past…

I grew up here in Ferriby, and it was a small world. We occasionally went to Hull to the pictures, but we’d only been to York once. One sunny Whitsun bank hol circa 1968, we all drove up to see a butcher’s shop dad was thinking of buying. It was an expedition. Mum packed the…

A rest day, at my parents’ house, somewhere round the halfway point of the trip. I went for a morning swim with my dad, and felt stiffer after twenty minutes in the pool than I have after ten days of cycling. Next time I’m at an interview for a job I won’t get, I’ll know…

A short day, ending with a trip over the Humber Bridge to my parents’ place in the village of North Ferriby, where I grew up. I explored Lincoln in the morning (pic), hunting and gathering local specialities for later picnic purposes. There were plenty of regionally-sourced items on offer – Lincolnshire sausages; Lincolnshire haslet; Lincolnshire…

It may have been Friday the 13th, but it was the best day of the trip so far: half-decent weather, which is 50% more decency than hitherto, and some world-beating local food and drink experiences. Especially the drink. I enjoyed my best traditional English Breakfast so far – the kitchen staff clearly knew their onions,…

I cycled round Stow’s handsome square, watching the town come to life, and hoping the miserable landlord of the pub next door had had an awful night’s sleep. I carried on heading northeast towards Lincoln, parallel to the Fosse Way/A429, along a great little back road (pic) that gave me splendid, elevated views of the…

After a rest day at home, I could push on. Literally, up the steep and narrow lane that led out from my shared house through the village and up into lush green Somerset hills. Gradually my fretting about this (an unevenly seated rear tyre) and that (a ticking chain) gave way to the joy of…

A rest day at home today (pic), doing routine chores in town – pictures to the chemist’s, replace my back tyre, buy a house etc. The back tyre had been deteriorating steadily since Taunton: a little thup-thup-thup, one per revolution, detectable as tiny jolts to the saddle. The rubber’s gentle way of telling you it’s…