Category: Route research

I’m recovering from scheduled hand surgery, which has resulted in forty or so stitches in my left palm and little finger. It looks like Boris Karloff’s attempts to sew a mailbag on deck in a storm. So for a couple of weeks I’m having to take things easy. Which means essential journeys only. Such as…

I had an unexpected stay in Rotterdam, so I nipped down south on the train today to see the Netherlands’ most celebrated cycle roundabout: the Hovenring, a gyratory suspended in mid-air above a main road in Eindhoven. The hovering interchange is on the Rondje Eindhoven (‘Little Ring’) bike route that loops round the city. Half-bridge,…

Julian’s Bower, at Alkborough in far-north-west Lincolnshire, is the only Julian’s Bower in England still called a Julian’s Bower. I cycled it today. A JB is a maze; technically, a labyrinth – a one-route turf path that winds its convoluted way within a circle to the centre. The concept wasn’t invented by the York one-way…

When asked where I’ve ridden in Britain, I’ve replied ‘everywhere except Skegness’. Well, I’ll have to find a new joke now, because I’ve finally cycled there. I went down the Lincolnshire coast from Cleethorpes via Mablethorpe, and very nice it was too. In parts. A few parts. After hearing bitterns at the Far Ings nature…

The Monsal Trail is one of Britain’s wowest-factor bike paths, stretching eight car-free miles between Bakewell and Annoyingly Not Quite Buxton. Once a mainline railway, it’s excitingly fitted out with half-a-dozen tunnels and several bridges, and offers some lofty views down over the Wye Valley. (Not that Wye. This Wye.) All this is fairly recent….

Lovely easy cycling today under blue skies, on two longish car-free cycle paths. Once they were steamy with locomotives; today they were steamy with cyclist breath on a bright but very chilly day. I cycled past frosty-looking sheep to get on to the Tissington a couple of miles from the hostel. It was early and…

With heavy rain forecast for this afternoon, I just did a short ride today, out on lanes direct from the hostel to do a bit of the High Peak Trail. It was all a bit overcast on the puddly back lanes and gravel tracks, but nicely quiet, and green in a grey sort of way….

I’m on a winter break in the Derbyshire Peaks, staying at YHA Hartington Hall for the bargain price of £13 a night. Up to the 1960s, the gritty tors, sheepy moors and lush dales were criss-crossed by passenger and mining railways. Now some of their trackbeds form four major railtrails: High Peak, Tissington, Monsal and…

I’m here in Northern Spain’s Basque Country for a few days’ winter break, bar-hopping on my folding bike. After a few days in Bilbao doing little but riding around slowly and eating pintxos – this region’s equivalent of tapas – I’m now in Donostia / San Sebastián also riding around slowly and eating pintxos. Yes,…

Milton Keynes, with its grid streets, shopping malls, shiny steel’n’glass newbuild, and sprawling scale, is like America without the guns. Or Trump. But with good bike paths, Greggs and Wetherspoons. So I like Milton Keynes. It was built from scratch starting in the 1970s as a new town halfway between Birmingham and London. Now a…