I stayed at my mum’s in Ferriby, and those of you who who have done similar will smile at the memory of the hospitality blitzkrieg: mountains of food, oceans of wine. No mountains here of course – after Ferriby it’s the plain of Holderness, sprawling east to the North Sea, and the nearest you get…
Category: Coast to Coasts
TPT 3: Penistone to Ferriby
Downhill all the way from here of course… and a lot of miles along often very pleasant railtrails, with plenty of sunny weekend leisure riders when I did it. Well, except when you take a picture of course, when the flow of picturesque riders suddenly dries up. Past Doncaster everything is flat. There’s some pleasant…
TPT 2: Altrincham to Penistone
The first few miles of today’s ride I’d done last year, between Wheelton and Hathersage on my Cape Wrath to Dover ride. It was déja vu all over again: like then, I got lost thanks to works closures and missing signage. After Stockport it’s a bit hilly, with ups and downs. You go past this…
TPT 1: Southport to Altrincham
The Trans Pennine Trail stretches 215 mostly offroad miles or so from Southport, on the Irish Sea, to Hornsea, on the North Sea. I had a few days blank in my diary – roughly from now until 2053 – so despite indifferent weather, finances and career prospects, I couldn’t resist cycling it. There’s a very…
P2G 4: Newark to Goole
From Newark up to Goole was a flat trundle alongside the Trent. Pleasant cycling on a warm morning, but the Danube it’s not. The Trent valley consists largely of power stations – you keep expecting the Super Mario Brothers to pop up out of the cooling towers – relieved by the odd high-security mental institution….
P2G 3: Leamington to Newark
A long hot haul up the Fosse Way today. Unfortunately, the speed I cycle, I couldn’t even get this ford to splash me with cool water. Ab Kettleby is a nondescript little village near Melton Mowbray. But it’s Britain’s top village – alphabetically – thanks to the way computers sort their gazetteers. Staying at a…
P2G 2: Bath to Leamington Spa
After living there a dozen years, but leaving in 1999, it was funny being in Bath for a night again. Half the shops I knew had gone, replaced by chainstores or upmarket shopping courts. Rather like meeting an old partner who has now married someone richer and more successful, who is very polite, but has…
P2G 1: Poole to Bath
Set off from Poole at 9.30ish, having taken a ludicrously early train from Waterloo. At Wimborne I dropped in on the Model Town. This is a one-tenth replica of the town as it was in the 1950s. You can walk up the streets and lanes and imagine being sixty feet tall. The shops have little…
WoR 4: Pocklington to Bridlington
My nose, carelessly left out unprotected in the sun yesterday afternoon, felt like a hot air balloon this morning. Ow. I cycled out of Pocklington and up through the rising Wolds past Kilnwick Percy and into the hidden gem of Millington: all cosy little lanes, threading their way through dry chalk valleys like railtrails. I…
WoR 3: Ripon to Pocklington
Another cold-nose night in the tend, though the rest of me was toasty. Again, I’d had just about enough dozing episodes to not wake up feeling cheated. It was another sunny but chilly morning. The route was all flat now but, despite the lack of anything vertical to be manouevred round, it was never straight:…