Category: Yorkshire places

With a pop. of 4,000, the compact yet minstered market town of Howden is one of East Yorkshire’s little gems. A pocket-sized Beverley, without the cows, racecourse or Wetherspoon. I’ve ridden through many times – it’s on the Transpennine Trail – but today I was there to investigate it from the saddle a bit more….

New Earswick, a mile north of York, was most famous for being a model village – a social utopia of decent houses for workers and managers at Joseph Rowntree’s enlightened chocolate factory, built in the very early 1900s. Until now. It’s now notorious as the home of the New Earswick Snakes. And the Bootham Stray…

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…

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…

My rides to all five of Yorkshire’s ‘Thankful Villages’ – whose sons emerged unscathed from WWI – continued this summer day with a ride from Hull to Catwick. (See map below). The small East Yorkshire village is that rarity, ‘doubly thankful’: one of only 14 in England and Wales that also came through WWII without…