I’m doing regular visits to see someone in hospital these days, which involve me getting from York to Cottingham (aka ‘Britain’s biggest village’). So, of course, I’m trying to turn it into a cycling opportunity when weather allows. It’s also saving enough in hospital parking charges to buy me a new bike by Christmas.
Today, under a baking hot sun and cloudless skies, I rode there on my offroad tourer (a heavily modified Carrera Vulcan, and it was heavy enough to start with) going on tracks and bridleways as much as possible. From Selby, at the end of the Solar System Greenway (aka ‘Planets Trail’) I took the Transpennine Trail heading east. The surface is everything you’d expect from a Sustrans route.
In other words, putting it politely, ‘variable’. I’m glad my bike has front suspension.
My first lunch stop, for second breakfast, was at Howden. In the shadow of the splendid Minster and ruined Abbey I snacked on a sausage roll and cream doughnut. This is a good balanced cyclist’s diet: one in each hand.
Clattering over the level crossing at Saltmarshe I was reminded that this stretch of railway track between Selby and Ferriby is a candidate for the longest straight in Britain. York to Thirsk on the main line is 22 miles, but this bit is possibly 23, depending on your definition of straightness. I looked hard but I couldn’t see Ferriby station in the distance.
Blacktoft, one of the remote shore villages on the fenland north of the Humber, has an honesty cafe in the village hall that I was delighted to see is still going. A good opportunity to fill up with water and use the toilet in some sort of zero-sum weight game, and leave a suitable donation.
I stopped briefly to admire Whitton Island, which only transitioned from mudbank to proper land a couple of decades ago. Now there are even more acres in Yorkshire than words in the Bible! Yay!
A pleasure of this sort of ride is exploring new lanes and tracks. Somehow, despite growing up round here, I’d not quite seen this pondy view of the village of Brantingham. There’s always something new and unexpected to discover, a principle which also applies to medical examinations when you pass sixty.
More bridleways and paths. It was delightful.
I was happy.
Especially when I went underneath the old Wolds Railway. It ran from Beverley to Malton through the chalky hills of East Yorkshire, but was closed in the 1950s, even before Beeching could get his sticky hands on it. Little is left now.
And so, finally, to Cottingham, after a super few hours of quiet rural cycling. The hospital grounds sprawl over several acres. By the time you’ve found the right ward the person you’ve come to visit is probably either cured or dead.
But they do have an entertaining toad. It’s one of a set produced a few years ago as a tribute to poet Philip Larkin, who worked at the university here and is buried in the nearby cemetery, and who also had a few things to say about hospitals and mortality.
But on a glorious day like today, I wasn’t thinking about such gloomy things. It was great to be alive and on a bike enjoying it. Carpe diem, folks.