Today’s eastward cycling began where yesterday’s left off: in a small lay-by on the moors above Hathersage. There is a very successful herd of red deer that live up here, within sight of Sheffield; but I didn’t see any of them this morning. It was an overcast, breezy start to the day – quite different […]
Month: September 2022
October plans
This next month – if it happens as it still could – will be pretty relentless and I have only really got myself fully organized for the next week. But since I know that much, let me share it with the world! Friday 30th September – evening – drive Hathersage to Nefyn, North Wales (avoiding […]
Today I rode from the Cheshire plain up and over the Peak District hills on a glorious sunny September day. I ended up at home, because it was too close to justify staying anywhere else. In the morning I will get a lift to where I reached in map 119 and resume my journey with […]
There are times when travelling by bicycle is much better done west to east than the other way around. In Britain, for the most part, that has to do with the prevailing wind. Today, as we made our way along the North Wales coast from Llandudno, on the spectacular national cycle route 5, I was […]
And so to Wales. It took two trains and a morning to get from home to Holyhead, one of the main ferry ports for Dublin, and the start of my 17th crossing of the country. The town is the biggest in the island of Anglesey, although a pedant might point out that Holyhead actually sits […]
Today was the one time in this entire adventure that I could leave my own house on a bike and simply ride. I was in my own OS Map, Landranger 110, where I ended the day yesterday after starting on the west coast. Today I would ride all the way to Cleethorpes on the east […]
Today was a three map day. If I have any chance of completing the country this year, that will be the first of many in the coming weeks. It required an early start. The first west bound train of the day from my village goes all the way to Liverpool (rather than Manchester only, as […]
From time to time in this adventure, the opportunity arises to visit somewhere truly different. Today was one of those days. Map 107 contains an extremity so extreme that it has to be put in its own box. Spurn Point is a narrow spit of land that hooks around from the northern entrance of the […]
Today was probably the flattest day of the entire journey so far. I can’t think of anywhere else this vertically challenged over so many hours of riding. The first section, from York to the wolds at Market Weighton, was particularly flat and not especially interesting. It was mostly just ploughed fields and hedgerows, with the […]
Today was another glorious ride from west to east across beautiful Yorkshire countryside. We were never far from somewhere I knew; but somehow we managed to follow an interesting and cycle friendly route that was almost entirely new to me. That is one of the objectives of the adventure, of course, to experience new places. […]