En route home from yesterday’s ride to all England’s highest roads, I rode from Teesdale to Kirkby Stephen. With a couple of hours to kill before my train, I worked them to death, doing some quick research for the Slow Travel Guide to the Yorkshire Dales that I’m updating.
I’d never ridden the B6276 road from Middleton-in-Teesdale to Brough before, so I was pleased to add this to the list of ‘Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, worn it out and now using it as oily rag’.
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In Middleton’s pleasant centre (cafes, pubs, Co-op, and old-fashioned things like Victorian shopfronts and butchers and ironmongers and banks) I was intrigued to see a yarnbombed bike.
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That B6276 strikes appealingly across the heathery moors. There were some groups of shooters in Range Rovers and tweeds, and it reminded me that it was grouse season: the time of year when people like me grouse about those with unearned wealth usurping the land for their own pleasure.
I had time to do some updating in Kirkby Stephen, which mostly consisted of talking to the lovely ladies in Tourist Info and eating fish and chips.
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As the Bradt Guide states, KS’s centre is blighted by traffic, and there was plenty of that today. However, the church offers some peace and quiet, and I enjoyed seeing the ancient stone cross with the image of a horned Loki, aka Tom Hiddleston.
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And, in the wiends (local name for ‘alleys’, see, I’ve been doing my research) off the market square, is the cosy riverside calm of Frank’s Bridge, pleasingly named in honour of a brewer.
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KS, I learned is a place that feels on the up again, with a thriving local arts and business scene, microbrewers, a new social club whose beer garden has views of Nine Standards Rigg, and only one empty shop (the former McColl’s, which some may feel is a not unbearable loss) which does not look like being empty for long.