Author: Rob Ainsley

Another dull, wet day of hard going into headwinds and rain. Just out of Pitlochry I dropped in on Blair Castle (pic), whose grounds were free to cyclists. They must be quite proud of young Tony. For the rest of the day, the A9 was my companion. The sort of companion you don’t really want….

Another day of horrible weather: driving rain, headwinds, and no scenery to speak of, or see. So bad, in fact, that I took no photos all day, as my camera wasn’t rated for underwater use. I felt angry, cold, and very wet. Breakfast was a Selkirk Bannock, a ‘rich and buttery leavened tea bread’, ie…

There are few better things in life than to wake refreshed after a fine night’s sleep in comfy bed. As I now knew to my cost, having dozed fitfully on a lumpy sofa for three hours after a skinful of cheap red wine. I was elevated a little by yesterday’s Craster kippers for breakfast, tangy,…

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,…