The poetically named Gypsey Race is East Yorkshire’s most enigmatic watercourse. One that only works part-time, like me, and keeps disappearing unpredictably, also like me. It’s a winterbourne; it’s a chalk stream; and it’s a predictor of disaster. It’s part of the mystery behind the Wold Newton Triangle, Yorkshire’s equivalent of the one in Bermuda….
Category: Yorkshire places
Thankful Yorks 1: Helperthorpe
The Great War of 1914–18 resulted in the loss of almost 900,000 of Britain’s men. Every city, town and village suffered casualties. Well, not quite every village. Historians reckon 53 settlements in England (none in Scotland or Ireland, as it happens) saw all their men return. Of these ‘thankful villages’, as they’ve been dubbed, five…
North Ferriby: Don’t stop the boats
A quick visit today to the village I grew up in, North Ferriby just outside Hull, to see what has put it on the map: the Ferriby Boats. We have a few claims to fame for a place of under 4,000 folk: Mariinsky dancer Xander Parish, weather presenter Alex Deakin, and anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce….
Ousefleet: Britain’s emptiest experience
Fans of Ordnance Survey maps – particularly the 204 of the classic Landranger series that cover Britain – spend hours looking for oddities. Two neighbouring, separate villages, both called ‘Great Totham’ in Essex, for instance (map 178). Or a strange dry ‘aerial river’ snaking from Littleport to Shippea Hill in Cambridgeshire (map 143). Or the…
Whitgift: Thirteen to the dozen
If Yorkshire was a clock face, the area roughly at half past four – the string of villages on the south bank of the Ouse – is one of its most obscure corners. And it’s a strange clock that I’m here to see. When I grew up, in North Ferriby just downstream outside Hull, I’d…
Everthorpe: Benchmark for Britain’s maps
The East Riding hamlet of Everthorpe has a claim to fame. And no, it’s not HMP Humber, the Category C prison nearby. Everthorpe’s USP is an OS FBM: an Ordnance Survey Fundamental Bench Mark. Most of us are familiar with OS trig points – summit concrete pillars once used for surveying heights and positions pre-GPS….
Cottingham: Going large
After riding through Sykehouse, England’s longest village, I headed to England’s largest village: Cottingham. Well, so it claims. With a population of 18,000 it’s certainly bigger than many towns (such as Middleham on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, home to under 500 people but also a lot of horses). It’s even bigger than Ripon…
Sykehouse: Long story
Q: What links – River Severn; Elizabeth II; M6; Sykehouse? A: England’s longest – river; reign; motorway; village. Yes, Sykehouse, excitingly positioned between Doncaster and Goole in south Yorkshire, is the longest village in the country. And to prove it I rode through the place on this, the shortest day of the year. There are…
Oulston: May the Foss be with you
The source of York’s other river, the Foss, is a hillside hole in a wood about fifteen miles north. A few years ago (as part of my Yorkshire River rides) I cycled to the High-Dales source of the Ouse, the Foss’s much bigger counterpart which swallows it up in the city centre. But today I…
Holgate: No trouble at t’Mill
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…