Cycling adventures across Yorkshire, Britain and beyond
I’d never seen Wharram Percy before I went today. I still haven’t. Nobody has. Because it’s not there any more. It’s Britain’s most famous DMV: deserted medieval village. A thriving little settlement in the 1300s, it was abandoned in the early 1500s when it became more profitable for the owners for sheep to live there…
Barkston Ash’s ash tree is the centre of Yorkshire. Sort of. The true geographical centre of Yorkshire – in other words, the place you could balance a Yorkshire-shaped jigsaw piece on top of say a cricket ball, though I’m not suggesting anyone try this – is in a field full of cows in the village…
ROAD CLOSED? Some motorists think it can’t apply to them. They’re always wrong. Cyclists think it can’t apply to them either. But we’re usually right. It’s nice, however, to have a sign explicitly saying so. Today I cycled from my house in York to my mum’s place, outside Hull. I did the route regularly, about…
Ever since I was much younger – about 50, say – I’ve wanted to cycle along Rudland Rigg. The unsealed, but decently-surfaced, old track runs ten miles north-north-west over the North York Moors. Drovers used it to shuttle cows and sheep to market, between Kirkbymoorside and Stokesley. I too had a lumbering and fattened-up beast…
Last week, amid cycle-route research round Swindon, I cycled round a few of Wiltshire’s White Horses – giant figures cut into the chalky hillsides (plus Uffington’s famous, and much older, example). So today I cycled up to Yorkshire’s own White Horse, at Kilburn, on the southwest edge of the North York Moors about twenty miles…
York’s a Viking City: indeed, it’s twinned, uniquely, with itself. With its past incarnation, Jorvik, the place thus rebranded by those non-horned-helmet-wearing Danes in 866. But York is also a Roman City, and today I was cycling in search of its Latin past. The Romans set it up as a garrison town in 71, utilising…
One day I’ll write a book about how you don’t need to visit the rest of the world to see the sights. We’ve got our own, better, more convenient versions here. Iguazu? Forget it – we’ve got Aysgarth Falls! Uluru? Waste of money – visit Cronkley Scar and tramp freely to the top. Eiffel Tower?…
Yorkshire is proud of its ancient traditions. Someone has blown a horn every night for 800 years in Ripon, for instance. The neighbours must be fed up of it by now. And we can boast England’s – maybe, pace Siena, even the world’s? – oldest horse race (pic). Every third Thursday in March since 1519,…
Day 3 of the River Ure ride was the climax of the whole project, finishing at the point where all the rivers become the Humber Estuary. It featured a dog weeing on a bike, a 1980s Iron Curtain border, fish and chips, the Ouse Riviera – and it was a scorcher. After a couple of…
Day 2 of the River Ure ride featured a pig playing bagpipes, a mysterious automatic hand, devilish darts, Roman mosaics, ice-cream at a lock, and a celebration riverside pint in York. An easy day today, following the river down the flat Vale of York from Ripon’s market square (pic) to York itself. We were in…