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…
Author: Rob Ainsley
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.]…
Baths 3: Braunschweig, Germany
[We spent so long in the Netherlands, having such a good time exploring the sandy (and sometimes car-free) islands in the North Sea, that we had to get a train to our next twin, Braunschweig. We kept quiet about that.] Braunschweig seems to have little in common with Bath, its twin town, at first glance….
Baths 2: Alkmaar, Netherlands
[From Bath, Netherlands we rode along the coast via Delft, where we stopped off for a few days. All the way to Alkmaar, the first twin, we enjoyed the seaside scenery of the LF1 cycle route.] Alkmaar is Bath’s twin in north Holland. The twinning started after the war when a fundraising project in Bath…
Baths 1: Bath, Netherlands
[We set off from our home in Bath on 29 April, and followed the Kennet and Avon canal to London and then Dover, camping and staying with friends. From Calais we headed east along the coast to the first alternative Bath, in an unexpected place…] Bath, Netherlands? Most Dutch shake their heads and deny knowledge…
Britain 22: John o’Groats to Thurso
With my End to End completed I enjoyed a smug breakfast, and a morning of leisure writing smug postcards, followed by a smug lunch, in the John o’Groats House Hotel. I amused myself watching the trickle of arrivals at the fingerpost from the comfort of my warm dry table – it was cold, drizzly and…
Britain 21: Helmsdale to John o’Groats
Today was the day I finished the End to End. Yesterday’s sunshine was too good to last, and today was another long slog into a chilly headwind with grey, blank, Tupperware skies. Riding up and down the Ord of Caithness (pic) felt like tracing a sine wave. I stopped at a farm, run by a…