We’ve explored Bradford by bike many times. Of Yorkshire’s seven cities (Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, York, Hull, Wakefield, and, er…) it’s the most surprising and intriguing, thanks to its ethnically diverse history (…ah yes, Ripon), from Little Germany to the authentic, tasty curry restaurants that feel like you’ve stepped into Pakistan (where 1 in 5 residents…
Category: Yorkshire places
Ingleton: Peak blinders
So. I was cycling round Ingleton, nestled between the Forest of Bowland and the Yorkshire Dales 50 miles northwest of Leeds, exploring routes for a well-known bike magazine. If you wish you could make a living doing this, well, so do I. Surrounded by spectacular limestone landscapes, the village is a centre for groups walking…
Halifax: Calder mobile
Halifax (pic), home to almost half Calderdale’s 190,000 folk, is not short of associations. Cat’s-eyes; Quality Street; the eponymous bank; the Eureka family attraction; victim of gratuitously infernal slander along with Hull. For telly viewers it’s the setting of comedy-drama Last Tango in Halifax, while for cyclists it’s the venue of Shibden Wall, a famously…
Easingwold: Narrow escape
Easingwold, a dozen miles north of York, is a pleasant market town (pic) – pubs, handsome square, friendly local vibe, farmers chatting by the bus stop – but is unlikely to make those tedious ‘1000001 Places to Visit Before You Die’ lists. Yet it has one very odd, virtually unknown, attraction, and that was why…
Ilkley: On Ilkla Moor baht ’elmet
I’d never been to Ilkley. Or Otley. Or Ilkley Moor, with or without a hat. So today I did something about it, cycling up and over Yorkshire’s most famous tract of upland: the windswept plateau which gave birth to its ‘national anthem’, On Ilkla Moor baht’ at. I took the morning commuter train from York…
Malham: Welcome to Norway
English scenery doesn’t really do spectacular, but some bits of Yorkshire come close. In a country of modest geography, the theatrical surprises of Malham Cove and Gordale Scar feel as vast as anything in Norway or Chile. Relatively, anyway; and the beer’s much better. No wonder author Bill Bryson chose to live here, in the…
Hessay: Journey to the Centre of the Earth
We all know Yorkshire is the centre of the world, but where’s the centre of Yorkshire? In other words, if the historic county was made of plywood instead of rocks, where would you be able to balance it on the point of a pencil stronger than the one in my WH Smith Pocket Diary? There…
Hebden Bridge: Hip operations
Hippy life in Yorkshire? I can promise you, having grown up through them, that the Swinging Sixties barely even wobbled in Hull, never mind swung. All that love, peace and alternative living may have gone on in the decadent south but it never made it north of Sheffield. So it’s a pleasant surprise to come…
Skipsea: Till the coast crumbles
Yorkshire’s Holderness coast is one of the strangest places to cycle in Britain. I spent today wandering the lanes round Skipsea (pic), south of Bridlington. Many old people – in other words, me – remember when these linked up with roads running along the clifftop. I cycled along them thirty years ago on my Raleigh…
Tan Hill Inn: Drink up
Yorkshire reckons it’s got the best of everything. All the stuff that counts anyway. France may do better philosophy, Germany engineering, and the Philippines know how to do nail bars. But for the best cricket, the best beer, the best scenery, the best people… well, it’s got to be the broad acres. (There are famously…