Having retrieved our bikes from the hostel shed – from a pile of 14 or so – we headed back south along the lakeside and on to National Cycle Route 10, ie a gravelly track, for 13 miles, across remote moorland to Newcastleton. This stretch west of the Water feels remote: a very few practical…
Category: Coast to Coasts
Reivers 2: Bellingham to Kielder
A short day today – just as well, after last night’s beer and wine and Radio 3; that Wagner must have given me a fuzzy head – with our destination Kielder and its hostel just 20 grey, damp but easy miles up the road. Kielder – originally built for workers constructing the reservoir, Britain’s most…
Reivers 1: Newcastle to Bellingham
With my friend Tim I’m doing a double Coast to Coast: the Reivers Route from Newcastle cross-country to Carlisle, returning back to Newcastle by Hadrian’s Cycleway. We had a convivial evening with Tim’s friends in an Ouseburn pub followed by a cosy Travelodge room with four occupants: Tim, me, and our bikes – his ancient…
R2R 3: Northallerton to Ravenscar
If day 1 was the Lakes, and day 2 the Dales, then day 3 was the North York Moors (above). This is just about my favourite bike-touring part of the world: a compact, beautiful landscape, where 15 minutes’ swearing gets you up to remote sheepy solitude, but three minutes’ glorious freewheel down gets you to…
R2R 2: Kendal to Northallerton
Glorious cycling with breathtaking scenery today (lots of this sort of stuff, above), in lovely weather: the forecasters were Michael-Fish-wrong, having promised daylong showers which never materialised, rather like the payments for the freelance work I do for Sky Arts. From Kendal it’s all up and down stuff to Sedbergh, which is STILL IN YORKSHIRE…
R2R 1: Ravenglass to Kendal
This trip is another Coast to Coast, along a route that simply looked fun on the map: Ravenglass (out west, in Cumbria, a bit north of Barrow) to Ravenscar (out east, a bit north of Scarborough). Not exactly rhyming, but maybe someone knows a technical term for when two similar things begin the same way,…
B2Y 7: Norwich to Yarmouth
A final leg that was further than planned. And somewhat damper – with rain all day I sometimes wasn’t sure if I was going through the Broads or underneath them. I had a quick look round Narch in the morning. The riverside path (above) and the cathedral (below) are well explored by bike, and the…
B2Y 6: Spalding to Norwich
A day of glorious sunshine, big skies, richly chilled saturated colours, and a tailwind that scooted me over 75 miles of flat East Anglia backroads with ease. Elevenses was at Kings Lynn (above). It’s good to have your preconceptions about a place challenged; I’d always thought KL was a weird terminus town, full of staring…
B2Y 5: Leicester to Spalding
Another wind-assisted day, from Rutland’s rolling hills to south Lincs’s pancake flatness: Oakham for elevenses, Stamford for lunch, Spalding for dinner. This bloke outside Oakham (above) was ‘walking’ his dog in the laziest way possible: not just doing it on his bike, but with that conveyor-belt tailwind, meaning he didn’t even have to pedal. The…
B2Y 4: Stafford to Leicester
East out of Stafford town centre this morning. Luckily there was a nice wide cycle track on the pavement (below). For today’s ride, Mark came up with several recommendations for things to investigate en route. They were all spot on, a slideshow of charming Middle Englishness: thatchy villages (Abbots Bromley, Newtown Linford), picturesque forest lanes…