Cycling adventures across Yorkshire, Britain and beyond
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…
The Egton Bridge Gooseberry Show – on the first Tuesday in August each year – is the world’s most ancient: over two centuries old, having started in 1800. A splendid excuse to visit the North Yorkshire Moors village today on my folding bike, thanks to a £3 trip on the 840 Coastliner from York, Britain’s…
Among England and Wales’s 53 ‘thankful villages’ – ones whose soldiers all survived WWI – Norton-le-Clay and Cundall, east of Ripon in North Yorkshire, are the closest together: neighbours, in fact, only a couple of kilometres of farmland lane apart. Today was baking hot and I wasn’t up for a long ride, so a bus-assisted…