Category: Yorkshire places

Of all 57 Yorkshire dales, Emmerdale is the best-known. Which is remarkable, as it doesn’t exist. Emmerdale is, of course, fictional: the creation of the long-running TV soap which, from the first episodes in 1972 to 1989, was known as Emmerdale Farm. Which, confusingly, was set in the equally fictional Beckindale, though this was renamed…

We pub pretty well in Yorkshire: 3,725 of them in all (or only 17, if you believe Wikipedia). These include not just the highest of all Britain’s 45,000 boozers (the Tan Hill Inn up in the Dales, 528m up, to be precise); but also the oldest. There are many claimants (this site lists 15) but…

Gravel roads, gravel pits, gravel bike. Perhaps you can spot the theme here: birds. Most weeks I cycle from York to my mum’s, outside Hull. At just the right point for a refreshment stop, about three-quarters of the way, is North Cave Wetlands: a quarry being turned into a 21st-century nature reserve. It has lakes,…

A place called Football. With the 2020 Euros currently taking place right now in, er, June 2021, I couldn’t resist cycling it. Football is a terraced street in Yeadon, on Leeds’s western outskirts. If you’ve ever flown in to Leeds Bradford Intergalactic Airport, you might have glimpsed it during your white-knuckle descent sideways against the…

Before the railways, drove roads were how livestock got from farm to market. Drovers followed well-drained ridgeways, avoiding both bogs and costly turnpikes down below; they were used to handling stubborn, lumbering beasts. All of which also applied to me today, with my trekking bike as the beast in question, and the route being Hambleton…

Yorkshire has several imposing canals, which often sound like other things. The mighty Leeds–Liverpool (grudge football fixture). The remarkable Huddersfield Narrow (prize rhubarb variety). The amazing Calder & Hebble (Perrier-award-winning female comedy duo). Not so Pocklington Canal, an isolated spur of water connecting the Derwent with the market town, a dozen miles east of York….

After being delighted by Coldstones Cut just west of Pateley Bridge earlier in the day, I still had a few hours before my bus back home, so I headed east to Brimham Rocks. I passed through the village of Glasshouses. It put me in mind of the previous week when I’d cycled through Stone in…

Mysterious sacred temple of an ancient civilisation; most perfectly preserved prehistoric hillfort in Britain; ancient stones aligned to tap the energy of ley lines that overlook vast panoramas… Coldstones Cut might look that way, but it’s none of these. It’s a hilltop artwork from 2010 that overlooks a dusty, noisy, working quarry – but it’s…

The Archers is set in a West Yorkshire village. Well, its theme tune is, anyway. And my trip to the place in question formed a lovely little half-day ride on this sunny morning. The BBC Radio 4 soap may take place in ‘Borsetshire’, somewhere round Worcestershire or Warwickshire, but the signature music is explicitly about…

Hornsea Mere is Yorkshire’s biggest body of water. The great county is big on many things liquid – rivers, reservoirs, beer – but not naturally-occurring lakes. In fact, its four largest aren’t even lakes at all, at least not in name. At joint No. 4, Scarborough Mere and Gormire, each 6.5 hectares; at No. 3,…