In popular culture, ‘Yorkshire’ means ‘the West Riding’. If it’s a cliché, a trope or a standing joke, it’s probably going to be from the industrial west of the county: ee-bah-gum, trouble at t’mill, brass bands, see-all-hear-all-say-nowt, Geoff Boycott and Fred Trueman, Norah Batty’s stockings, Yorkshire Airlines, Four Yorkshiremen Talking…
The itchy blanket of the West Riding’s cultural dominance came about through economics. The fast-flowing streams powered the mills of the industrial revolution, and the urban expansion of Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, Halifax and the rest. Like the saying goes, follow the money.
Certainly don’t follow me. I cycle too slowly.
Anyway, today (Yorkshire Day, as it happened) I finished off my little trilogy of rides from York, the spiritual and geographical heart of Yorkshire, to each of its three Ridings capitals and County Towns: Northallerton, Beverley and now, Wakefield, one of the county’s eight cities, and the administrative centre of the historic West Riding.
I started as with the other rides: from the appropriate face of York Minster. Its West Side is the first sight many visitors have of Europe’s largest Gothic building, as they walk from the train station by the City Walls. The splendid facade is gloriously illuminated in the evening, and spectacular at sunset.
It was impressive enough this morning too, as I set off. I couldn’t resist snapping the scale model of the Minster and its surrounds that sits in front of the West Side. It’s a shame the scale model doesn’t have a scale model version of the scale model, with its own scale model etc, like the multiply-nested chests made by MacCruiskeen in Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman.
Most of today is offroad. I headed over to the west bank of the Ouse, the historic boundary between West and East Ridings, and followed the Way of the Roses route through the racecourse. Then it was the mediocre cycle path alongside the A64, where the traffic was at a standstill because of too much traffic. Damn traffic. If only so many people didn’t drive cars, there’d be more room for everyone to drive cars.
I stopped briefly at Tadcaster to admire its never-used railway viaduct, which I’ve visited before. Next I paused to admire a chemical factory – Molson Coors, which makes various brands of fizzy drink, some of them the same colour as beer.
Actually I rather like Madrí, their faux-Spanish lager-flavour drink that’s synthesised here on Station Road, and not in some artisanal factory in Zaragoza’s historic square.
My trendy, woke, tree-hugging sympathies tell me I should be having authentic Spanish stuff, but then the eco voice in my head reminds me that there’s little point flying crates of standard-issue europils over from the peninsula when we can fabricate it here in Yorkshire.
Farmy lanes led me alongside the A1(M) and through Aberford, which always puzzles me (mouth of the River Ford? ford over the River Aber?). From here I took a bridleway, part of National Cycle Route 66, past a notable piece of sociodendrology. Nellie’s Tree was crafted by local lad Vic Stead, who was courting young Nellie from Aberford circa 1920.
Vic grafted some beech saplings to make an N-shape in honour of his sweeheart’s initial, and it clearly did the trick. They married and had a family, and the tree was voted Woodland Trust Tree of the Year in 2018. So it’s fortunate that Vic’s girlfriend wasn’t, say, a Japanese girl named 麗.
After Garforth came a long stretch of railtrail, untarmacked but just-about-OK. Normally I find railtrails, shut in as they usually are by trees and vegetation, gloomy and dull. But in today’s hot sunshine I was pleased of the shade and cool.
The view opened out briefly at St Aidan’s Reserve, a pleasant country park on the site of an open-cast coal mine. I crossed the Aire and tracked more railtrail.
The cycle path outside Methley always confuses me: it has an iron gateway saying ‘Welcome to Leeds’ which is nowhere near Leeds, and goes in the wrong direction.
Just after Stanley, at Stanley Ferry, I joined the canal towpath briefly. It was all lovely and tranquil on this hot summer day. The thought of a nice crisp Madrí Excepcional at a shady waterside pub table was tempting, but I remembered that Wakefield was only three miles away, and has Wetherspoons.
I did however give in to an ice cream in a housing estate as I entered Wakefield, having had a Pavlovian reaction to the ice-cream van’s jingle. Instantly I was ten again, on my bike, riding around the estate I grew up in Ferriby and also buying a packet of cigarettes for my mum with her handwritten note of authority.
Last time I was here in Wakefield was for the Rhubarb Festival a couple of years ago, so I didn’t need to explore too much this time. After briefly admiring the cathedral I checked out the County Hall, like those of Beverley and Northallerton a fine upstanding building of the late 1800s installed specifically as a Riding admin centre.
Why Wakefield as West Riding capital? Perhaps, in the mid-1800s, the salubrious market town felt a more appropriate place for bourgeois bureaucrats than the grubby factoryscapes of Leeds, Bradford or Calderdale.
Anyway, Wakefield’s County Hall isn’t open to the public, and I had no business here beyond ritual photographs, so I was soon free to go.
So ended my three very enjoyable rides from my home to the three Ridings capitals; all delightful routes, mostly car-free and gloriously quiet. I’m not sure I gained any insight into the rationales of administrative division or regional governance, but I had a few pints, an ice cream or two, and enjoyed a trio of delightful bike rides.
Miles York to Wakefield: 38
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