Day 2 of the fourth of my Yorkshire Compass Rides was a morning of misty hills, the setting of a comedy that wouldn’t die, the magnificently bleak Saddleworth Moor, some awesome reservoir views, and a border that wouldn’t die either. From Grange Moor I headed on back lanes (pic) past the village of Lepton. This…
Category: Yorkshire Ridings
SW 1: York to Grange Moor
The fourth of my Yorkshire Compass Rides was a two-day trip out to the southwestern extreme in what is now Oldham. Day 1 involved Yorkshire’s old brewing capital, the site of England’s bloodiest battle, the tallest freestanding structure in the UK, and a psycho cat. I headed out south on a sunny afternoon on the…
Hebden Bridge: Hip operations
Hippy life in Yorkshire? I can promise you, having grown up through them, that the Swinging Sixties barely even wobbled in Hull, never mind swung. All that love, peace and alternative living may have gone on in the decadent south but it never made it north of Sheffield. So it’s a pleasant surprise to come…
E: York to Bridlington
The third of my Yorkshire Compass Rides was a wind-assisted glide through the Wolds to seaside Bridlington, and the eastern promontory of Flamborough Head. It included the area’s most scenic downhill, a Roman Road, a lighthouse-rich chalkberg, and a land train. There’s always something nice about returning home. Less so this morning, though, as I…
S: York to Harthill
The second of my Yorkshire Compass Rides took me south to the county’s most obscure extremity, and was a day of planets, power stations, pints, and a place called Wales. I rode south alongside a mirror-flat Ouse out of York and down the planets trail, a fantastic scale model of the solar system where the…
N: York to Redcar
The first of my Yorkshire Compass Rides was a glorious day offering some characteristic Yorkshire views – stately homes; the North York Moors; beaches with hardy bathers; closed factories; and penguins. I headed north out of York through the misty Howardian Hills (pic). They take their name from the Howard family, who still own much…
Skipsea: Till the coast crumbles
Yorkshire’s Holderness coast is one of the strangest places to cycle in Britain. I spent today wandering the lanes round Skipsea (pic), south of Bridlington. Many old people – in other words, me – remember when these linked up with roads running along the clifftop. I cycled along them thirty years ago on my Raleigh…
Tan Hill Inn: Drink up
Yorkshire reckons it’s got the best of everything. All the stuff that counts anyway. France may do better philosophy, Germany engineering, and the Philippines know how to do nail bars. But for the best cricket, the best beer, the best scenery, the best people… well, it’s got to be the broad acres. (There are famously…
Beverley: Wolds apart
Beverley (picture), at the edge of the gentle Wolds, is one of our great secrets: a fine, characterful Georgian market town with its own brand of Yorkshireness. While it has plenty in common with the county’s other market towns such as Richmond – a fondness for turning potentially pedestrianised-showcase market squares into car parks, for…
Market Weighton: Tall stories
A key to understanding Yorkshire is that nothing else, anywhere, will ever be as good as it is in God’s Own Country. (That’s what Yorkshire people call Yorkshire. It’s not what God calls it, but obviously His opinion doesn’t count as much as, say, Fred Trueman’s.) Think, for example, of the farmer whose land straddled…