Category: Route research

I just spent a few days exploring Utrecht, inside and outside the city, for another article. Even by Dutch standards, this is a bike-friendly place: over 60% of city-centre trips are pedalled, and outstanding cycleways – wide, smooth, continuous, and with priority at junctions – are everywhere. Nobody knows how many kilometres of bike path…

Returning to England from Slovakia, I had a final layover in Amsterdam between overnight bus and Eurostar. I spent a very happy five hours in the chilly sunshine exploring the centre easily and efficiently, thanks to the city’s cycle path system. With all those cyclists intent on getting somewhere, things can be hectic in the…

I had a couple of days spare after finishing the Slovakia End to End, so I went to Prague. I had no plan, but I had a bike, and that’s all you need. The city is justly feted as one of Europe’s most elegant and visitable, and the cheap but excellent beer is a welcome…

A bit of informal route research today round the Wye Valley. I’d come here intending to ride through the recently opened (2021) Tidenham Tunnel, the vital link in the lovely five-mile Wye Valley Greenway. I started with a sortie across the (old) Severn Bridge and back, over its dramatic 1.6km cyclable crossing (including the Aust…

A lazy day of exploring the hilly country west of Hereford today, around the Golden Valley. I headed down the railtrail south from the town and struck west into the uplands, overlooked dramatically by Hay Bluff. (On the other side is the awesome Gospel Pass, which I rode on my Welsh End to End in…

On 30 Jun 1921, Alfred Watkins made an astonishing discovery while out walking in Herefordshire. He realised that any two points of ancient, mystical significance – Stonehenge or Lord’s, say – were always connected by a straight line. He called these ‘ley lines’, and detailed his insights in his classic 1925 book The Old Straight…

Herefordshire’s tourist people are pushing the county’s cycling trails, and it’s easy to see why, even when your eyesight is as bad as mine. Fans of everything from cider to ley-lines to classical music to picture-postcard villages have inviting routes to explore. (Three of those particularly appeal to me: perhaps you can guess which.) The…

A day of headwinds and three hours of rain. I should have expected that from the BBC weather forecast. Because that had told me it would be breezy and sunny with a brief shower. But I did the research I needed to, though the challenging weather did put me through my paces. Paces up Buttertubs,…

I’m very keen on wild swimming, so long as I don’t have to enter any water to do so. Anyway, that said, I’m doing a recce of my next route for a magazine article, on wild swims. The idea is to come up with a route that’s not only a very good ride of one…

I’ve a soft spot for royalty. It’s a bog in the North Yorkshire Moors… I may not be a fan of hereditary privilege, but I did enjoy cycling through Sandringham Estate today, and visiting an unusual disused royal station. I was in King’s Lynn for three nights, for reasons too complex to relate here. But…