Cycling adventures across Yorkshire, Britain and beyond
The road to Castle Howard is one of the oddest in Yorkshire. It bounds straight over slopes of the Hambleton Hills AONB, as straight as a reformed ex-con arrow following a Roman Road with a ruler-defined GPX. And it has some cool gates that are only just big enough to admit a bus, or those…
There are plenty of reasons to come to Goathland, one of the North York Moors’ most characterful and interesting villages. Its setting for the 1990s ITV series Heartbeat. The station’s appearances in Harry Potter. A road built by a giant, or the Romans, or perhaps someone else. Mallyan Spout’s dramatic waterfall. Sheep. For me, though,…
Most people come to Whitby for the Goth festivals, the fish and chips, the quaint old fishing-cottage alleys, Captain Cook, the Abbey, or the Dracula shtick. Today, I came for a cobbled lane. Because the rugged harbour gem has a candidate for Britain’s steepest cyclable street. Well, cyclable in theory. Church Road, aka Donkey Track,…
Three of Britain’s most decisive and pivotal battles were each fought a short bike ride from York, which probably explains it. I’ve previously ridden to Stamford Bridge, where in 1066 England beat the Norwegians before losing to the French at Hastings three weeks later. And I’ve been to Towton, a turning point in the Wars…
Little Switzerland; Little Germany; Little Canada; Little Denmark; Little Holland. Yorkshire contains many miniature foreign countries, and I’ve cycled the lot. Which is most convincing? Answers revealed below. But first, today’s trip, in which I completed my globetrotting-at-home set with Thorne. The small town outside Doncaster is nicknamed ‘Little Holland’ for its supposed resemblance to…
‘BERYL BURTON OBE / Was a cycling phenomenon’, states the blue plaque in Morley town centre. The ‘Yorkshire housewife’ (as they called her then, instead of ‘cycling superstar’) indeed was. She dominated women’s road, track and time-trial cycling in Britain through the 1960s: almost unbeatable from 1959 to 1983, winning 90 UK championships and seven…
I’ve cycled most of Yorkshire’s canals, from the aquatic urban highway of the Leeds and Liverpool, to the backwaters of the Pocklington. But I’d never done the Huddersfield Narrow, arguably the most impressive of the county’s lot. Today I put that right with my friend Mark (who’s planning a remarkable British travel odyssey of his…
Yorkshire’s most remote hamlet? Cockayne’s few houses, farms and church sit at the head of Bransdale, in the North York Moors. It’s at the end of two parallel narrow lanes up the valley, and not on the way to anywhere. The only road exit is back down the same valley. Cockayne’s nearest shop is ten…
Yorkshire schoolkids know their triangles. Equilateral; isosceles; scalene; rhubarb. This last, of course, being a three-sided geographical shape with Wakefield at an apex. It’s the world’s rhubarb-growing equivalent of Champagne, or Roquefort, or Newcastle. So forget Bermuda: this is the world’s most famous triangle. The Rhubarb Triangle. The exact corners can vary according to who…
Britain’s favourite 20th-century poet (whose centenary is in 2022) wasn’t initially impressed by Hull. Nice and flat for cycling, was Philip Larkin’s faint-praise damn. But he lived, worked and (early on, at least) rode his bike here for thirty years until his death in 1985. The city inspired his best work. And it’s work which…