Cycling adventures across Yorkshire, Britain and beyond
Sun 1 Feb is Yorkshire Pudding Day. Yes, the greatest county’s famous batter-based dinner-bulker has a day all of its own. So in preparation for the celebrations, I rode today from Malton to Scarborough through the southern fringes of the North York Moors, for reasons that will become as clear as beef dripping. Just before…
New Earswick, a mile north of York, was most famous for being a model village – a social utopia of decent houses for workers and managers at Joseph Rowntree’s enlightened chocolate factory, built in the very early 1900s. Until now. It’s now notorious as the home of the New Earswick Snakes. And the Bootham Stray…
From Britain’s oldest inhabited house (arguably) to Britain’s oldest-ever house (possibly) today: Gray’s Court, York (lived in since 1091) to Star Carr (a mesolithic site with remains of an 11,000-year-old roundhouse). Which included some rather wonderful riding across the Wolds on my Spa Wayfarer (a provider of touring pleasure since 2021). The morning’s mix of…
Last century, York was a chocolate manufacturing powerhouse. Kit Kat, Yorkie, Smarties, After Eights, Aero, Chocolate Orange and others were invented here. They and other brands (Polo, All Gold, etc) were made in their millions in the Rowntree factory on Haxby Road, and the Terry factory on the Knavesmire. At its mid-twentieth century peak, the…
At a loose end last year, I did a home-base End to End of York. At another loose end today, I did a Side to Side. I’m talking the ‘City of York’: the roughly ten-by-ten mile non-metropolitan district within whose boundaries live 203,000 people in 95,000 houses with 235 pubs, 193 churches, 65 supermarkets, 43…
After a splendid time at Reeth Show yesterday, I rode up hill and down dale to Skipton today: a leisurely forty-mile traverse of the Yorkshire Dales from top to bottom, involving Swaledale, Wensleydale, Coverdale, Wharfedale and Airedale. (There’s something like 30–50 dales in the Dales, so this only involved a fraction of them.) →See map…
Yorkshire’s annual country shows and fairs are a strong part of the county’s culture. They vary from the blockbuster ‘national’ Great Yorkshire Show each July to many dozens of smaller, field-sized village affairs. In the upper middle are grand events such as Reeth Show, up in Swaledale each August Bank Holiday Monday. Today was August…
Yorkshire has many places with very silly names. Rise, Jump, Settle. Idle. Wham. Giggleswick, Land of Nod, Netherthong. Robin Hood (yes, not ‘Robin Hood’s Bay’). And everyone’s favourite, Wetwang. Plus Booze, where I was this morning. The hamlet of under a dozen houses is up a steep, steep lane off Arkengarthdale, not far from Reeth…
I’ve overnighted while cycle-touring in all sorts of places. Docked ferries, (former) jails, military barracks, tractor sheds. Even a rare-breed tropical spider house in the Amazon – though it wasn’t called that, it was called a ‘holiday lodge’. But last night, in the Yorkshire Dales, I experienced a rather special first: staying overnight in a…
If you only visit one ‘thankful village’ – one of the 53 in England and Wales to have all its sons survive WWI – make it Scruton, up in North Yorkshire, between Richmond and Northallerton. The last of my rides to all five of Yorkshire’s finished here today, at a village where, more than any…