Cycling adventures across Yorkshire, Britain and beyond
At last, I got to The Point. Which is where my odyssey down the Yorkshire coast finished today, at the end of Spurn Head: the four-mile-long sandy spit, at times no wider than a tennis court, which wanders recklessly out into the North Sea from the bottom right-hand corner of East Yorkshire. See map of route…
The crumbling coast between Bridlington and Kilnsea is the fastest-disappearing in Europe. Riding it is a sobering experience. Roads and lanes end abruptly on a literal cliff-edge, blocked off by concrete slabs that get moved regularly, wearily, back with every new collapse. Caravan pitches, farmland and houses tumble into the sea after every storm. It’s…
As I cycle my own Yorkshire coast ride, I’m seeing plenty of publicity – in the form of posters and banners – for Route YC. It’s a set of road trips, no doubt inspired by the success of Scotland’s NC500, for cyclists and drivers to explore the Yorkshire coast. And, as it happened, in the…
Yorkshire thinks it has the biggest and best of everything, and that includes its stretch of coast. So this week I’m cycling the 120-ish miles where North and East Ridings meet the North Sea, from Redcar down to Spurn Head as close to the coast as I can, via rugged cliffs, fishing villages and seaside…
These are exciting times for Tile Map fans. The ceramic wall charts show the North East’s rail network circa 1910. Up to 2024, nine railway stations in Yorkshire had one on display, some original, some replicas (such as Hunmanby’s, installed in 2021). I cycled them all in 2023. Nine… until now. Because today Driffield unveiled…
Earlier this year I cycled between Britain’s biggest and smallest churches, Liverpool Cathedral and St Trillo’s, Colwyn Bay. (You can probably guess which is which.) So on this sunny day I couldn’t resist doing the Yorkshire equivalent, riding from its largest – York Minster – to the smallest, forty-odd miles to the east: the tiny…
York is not short of images. The Minster, the City Walls, the Shambles, the pubs, the TikTok tourists queueing three hours to buy a ghost-shaped pepperpot. But there are many lesser-celebrated, quirky things to marvel at. I list them on my Bizarre Sights Guide to York on this website. My favourite of the lot is…
It may sound like a medieval church reformer, but Bishop Wilton – thanks to an article on unknown hidden-gem villages in the Sunday Times last weekend – has suddenly become East Yorkshire’s most famous secret place. So I couldn’t resist the excuse to visit it this sunny day, as part of a scenic amble round…
Drove roads – those ancient tracks once used to move livestock herds across the country to market – can make excellent mountain biking opportunities for people like me who don’t really like mountain biking. Mastiles Lane, running over the limestone hills of the Yorkshire Dales between Malham Tarn and Wharfedale, is a prime example. I…
In popular culture, ‘Yorkshire’ means ‘the West Riding’. If it’s a cliché, a trope or a standing joke, it’s probably going to be from the industrial west of the county: ee-bah-gum, trouble at t’mill, brass bands, see-all-hear-all-say-nowt, Geoff Boycott and Fred Trueman, Norah Batty’s stockings, Yorkshire Airlines, Four Yorkshiremen Talking… The itchy blanket of the…