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Glorious Bike Rides

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Reviews

“Lost Lanes West is a joy” – road.ccc

“Beautifully produced… lovingly researched” – Podium Cafe

“The most beautiful guide to cycling in South East England” – London Cyclist

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Out storm chasing

Out storm chasing

Evening swim in the Usk. The air is calm but close

Evening swim in the Usk. The air is calm but close, thunder threatening from the west. Sheep nibble the parched cliff edge as sand martins wheel overhead and dive into their burrows. Paradise.

With a nod to the pot belge beloved of racing cycl

With a nod to the pot belge beloved of racing cyclists, here's my cycle touring magic potion. It can spice up the humblest bowl of noodles (or even cous cous) with a fragrant, warming, salty, umami laden rush of flavour. Just add an egg and any veg or foraged greens, finely sliced.

It's borrowed from 'Every Grain of Rice', @fuchsiadunlop's amazing book of Sichuan cooking. A mix of chili oil (home made with rapeseed oil, gochujang, ginger & sesame seeds), light and dark soy sauce and Chinkiang vinegar. I sometimes add a bit of minced garlic & ginger.

This tiny vial is enough for a few meals and weighs just 40g.

What are your favourite flavour tricks for lightweight camping foods?

#camping #cooking

Fresh back from a fantastic couple of days with @j

Fresh back from a fantastic couple of days with @jamesl_w exploring the beautiful #LostLanes of West Dorset.

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Ex-pro James (aka Hank) is more at home on a 6kg carbon race bike, flying around a crit course, putting the hammer down in the Tour of Britain or taking on extreme cycling challenges as a presenter on @globalcyclingnetwork.⠀
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But fair play to James, he really threw himself into my kind of slow cycling: stopping for brew ups, river swims and even spending a rainy night in a bivvy bag. I'm thrilled to have helped a hard core bike racer discover his inner cyclotourist. And I reckon James a natural, don't you?
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#westdorset #cycling #cycletouring #slowcycling #lostlaneswest #helllane #southdorsetridgeway #roughstuff #westcountry #dorset

Such clear light this evening. Sugarloaf from the

Such clear light this evening. Sugarloaf from the hill fort at Twyn y Gaer, my favourite viewpoint in the Black Mountains. In the other direction the Malvern Hills are a grey blue ripple on the horizon.

Always a pleasure, never a chore. Gospel Pass, the

Always a pleasure, never a chore. Gospel Pass, the road home.

One of the lesser used border crossings between Wa

One of the lesser used border crossings between Wales and England. An ancient byway beneath Hatterrall Ridge.

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#cycling #cycloexploring #650b #roughstuff #itsallrideable #greenlane #lostlanes

Candyfloss over Abergavenny. This cloud appears to

Candyfloss over Abergavenny. This cloud appears to be asking some kind of question. I only wish I knew the answer.

#clouds #cloudspotting

And so to the 30th and last of my special places f

And so to the 30th and last of my special places from #LostLanesNorth. This is the Wheatsheaf pub in Beetham, towards the end of Ride No. 30 "Brief Encounter", a route which begins at Carnforth railway station (where much of the film Brief Encounter was shot, and which is still recognisable from the ramps to the platforms to the refreshment room). The route heads north through Arnside and Silverdale, hopping by train across the River Kent to Cartmel and the edge of Lakeland before looping back through sleepy Witherslack and a string of limestone villages and country estates.⠀ ⠀

One of these villages is Beetham, and a very handsome village it is. Though a pub may have been on this site as long ago as 1609, this black and white Jacobean revival building with its elaborate oriel window was built around 1900. It's almost ridiculous and commands the corner where it stands across from the church. Anyone passing has to stop and stare. I don't know if the original interior ever matched the extravagant exterior but it's long gone now, replaced by the bland 'upmarket country inn' catalogue style. ⠀
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It's not really a destination in and of itself, rather it's one of dozens of places that will catch my eye in a day's riding: buildings, trees, rocks, fields, almost anything really. I never regret the places I stop at but I am often filled with remorse at those I pass by. There's something about the motion of riding a bike, and the psychology of travel that makes you want to keep on moving when it might be more rewarding to stop awhile. Fortunately, when writing a guidebook, stopping is part of the job. ⠀
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I hope you've enjoyed this series. You can see them all on the #lln30places hashtag. ⠀
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#lostlanes #jacobean #pub #architecture #cumbria

A few moments before the big meadow descent. File

A few moments before the big meadow descent. File under "I never go for a walk without my bike" and "what goes up must go down". #roughstuff #23mm #pinkshorts @rsfarchive #lostlaneswest #dorset #cranbornechase #cycletouring #choosecycling

Looks like a sunset shot but this was 6.30 in the

Looks like a sunset shot but this was 6.30 in the morning during in the heatwave of July 2016. After a bivvy night on Cranborne Chase in which I'd forgotten my sleeping bag but it didn't matter because it was so warm. This is my old friend and fellow travel writer Harry Adès disappearing into a meadow while descending a grassy path on his trusty 23mm tyres. Oh how we baked that day. It was one of several days I spent on Cranborne Chase researching for Lost Lanes West. It's an often overlooked cycling destination that offers plenty of lost lanes and some fantastic rough stuff on ridgeways and old drove roads. .
#roughstuff #23mm #pinkshorts #dorset #lostlaneswest #heatwave #outtakes

My 29th special place from #LostLanesNorth is the

My 29th special place from #LostLanesNorth is the Great Stone of Fourstones. It's from Ride No.29 "Take the High Road", which in 82km crams more variety into a day out than any other ride in the book. From the centre of the elegant city of Lancaster, out on the River Lune cycle path to the viewpoint at Crook of Lune then up into Roeburndale and onto the fabulous Hornby Road to Slaidburn then back via the Cross of Greet climb, the highest paved road in the Forest of Bowland and a return along the Lune. This is a good place to stop for a breather after the big climb. ⠀ ⠀
This elephantine lump of limestone is a glacial erratic. Pushed, dragged and rolled here by passing glaciers the strata are now perpendicular to the ground. The same glaciers carved out the U-shaped valleys of the Yorkshire Dales, the Forest of Bowland and much of Northern England (they didn't make it into the Midlands and Southern England). ⠀
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There were once four stones here (hence 'Fourstones') but the others were broken up and used as building materials. The stone is one of the traditional markers of the Yorkshire-Lancashire boundary. Proud Lancastrians might say that the 15 steps carved in the boulder allow Yorkshire folk to climb to the top and look enviously into Lancashire's land of milk and honey. The 5m tall boulder stands on the last sliver of Bowland that's still in Yorkshire. Traditionally, Slaidburn and much of the uplands were part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, but they've been annexed by Lancashire in the bloodless coup of the 1974 local government reorganisation (though meagre compensation for what Lancashire lost to Cumbria). ⠀
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Looking north the three peaks of the Yorkshire Dales are clearly visible and it's a good place to appreciate the connection between Bowland and the Dales.⠀
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#lln30places #limestone #boulder #geology #yorkshire #bowland ⠀

Socially distanced Friday beers on the hill

Socially distanced Friday beers on the hill

My 28th special place from #LostLanesNorth is the

My 28th special place from #LostLanesNorth is the last Clarion House, from Ride No.28 "The Giant of Ribblesdale". ⠀
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You can't talk about the history of cycling in Northern England without talking about Clarion Cycling Clubs, the socialist societies that sprung up in towns and cities from the 1890s onwards, inspired in great measure by the writings of Robert Blatchford, his newspaper 'The Clarion', and his book Merrie England. As the Guardian once noted "For every convert made by Das Kapital, there were a hundred made by Merrie England." ⠀
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British Socialism - or perhaps it's more accurate to say English Socialism - was more Morris and Ruskin than Marx and Lenin. Nature and the outdoors, friendship and and fellowship, and health of body and mind were at the heart of things. Local branches set up Clarion Houses in rural areas, run by club members, provided refreshments, and often accommodation, for walkers, cyclists and others who wished to escape for a time from the smoky and increasingly crowded towns and cities. ⠀
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Clarion membership reached its peak in 1936, with 233 sections across the UK and 8,306 members. Clarion members went to fight against fascism in the Spanish Civil War - some riding there by bike. Rather puts today's idea of 'adventure cycling' in the shade. ⠀
The ILP Nelson Clarion House was established in 1912 by socialists from the nearby a cotton milling town of Nelson (where Carradice bags are still made, with Karrimor founded just a few miles away). The last remaining of all the Clarion Houses is still going strong thanks to a new generation of club members and volunteers. It's open on Sunday afternoons (though probably not during the Covid-19 outbreak). A great theme for a bike tour would be to visit long lost Clarion Houses - there's plenty of information on the web. ⠀ ⠀

The motto of the Clarion is "Fellowship is Life, Lack of Fellowship is Death". Not catchy but gets to the point.Clarion cycling clubs are still going and the London Clarion is the cheapest place to get third party insurance and assistance in case of an accident.⠀
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#lln30places #lancashire #clarioncycling #socialsm #clarion #nelson #pendlehill⠀

Here's the Hoober Stand, looming out of the shadow

Here's the Hoober Stand, looming out of the shadows like the prow of a ghost ship. It's my 27th special place from #LostLanesNorth, part of the ritual landscape of the Wentworth Estate. We usually talk about ritual landscapes in relation to prehistoric sites like Stonehenge and Avebury but why not for a landed estate dotted with follies? And what were they worshipping? Money, power, ancestors. The usual stuff.⠀ ⠀

Ride No. 27 is a multi-surface excursion north of Sheffield into the South Yorkshire Coalfield. After La Traversée de Rotherham, with its metaphorical grit and very real streets of broken glass, it comes a as a surprise to emerge into the Georgian arcadia of the Wentworth estate. The Earls Fitzwilliam made a fortune in the iron and coal business and is where the money was spent, well some of it anyway. The big house, Wentworth-Woodhouse, is reputed to have 365 rooms, and house guests were issued with confetti to drop as they wandered the corridors lest they get lost. It's frontage is twice the length of Buckingham Palace. You can walk up the carriage drive but cycling is forbidden. This is a real shame as it would be the best way to arrive. My route picks a way on lanes tracks avoiding the sometimes busy B-roads. On summer Sundays from 2pm to 5pm you can go inside and climb to the top for the view over the treetops (£2.50 entry). ⠀
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The Hoober Stand is one of a several stone follies in the parkland that ensured the earls could look up from their breakfast boiled eggs and see their marks on each horizon. The Needles Eye is nearby, and Kepple's Column is on the far side of the valley. The Fitzwilliams are considered to have been benevolent employers, at least by the standards of the day. During the General Strike of 1926, the earl kept his miners fed and even taught them to play polo on pit ponies on his front lawn. Their politics may have drifted since then. The next in line to inherit the estate is Helena de Chair, whose husband is the hard right Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.⠀
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#lln30places #hooberstand #yorkshire⠀

For my 26th special place from #LostLanesNorth we'

For my 26th special place from #LostLanesNorth we're in the old walled kitchen garden of Cannon Hall, a stately home a few miles outside Barnsley, that's on the route of Ride No.26 "Hammer and Chisel", which goes from Wakefield out via the Hepworth Gallery and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to the edge of the Pennines at Penistone. ⠀
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Cannon Hall was the seat of the Spencer-Stanhope family. There had been a big house here since the time of the Domesday Book if not before. In 1660 it was bought by John Stanhope, a Welsh maker of hay-rakes. The family became active in the local iron and coal industry and amassed a vast fortune. ⠀
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In the 1750s Benjamin Spencer dabbled in the transatlantic slave trade and named his slave ship "Cannon Hall". Many country estates in Britain are tainted, to a greater or lesser degree, by the shame of slavery, though this is often glossed over in their official histories (even more were enriched by empire and colonialism). An iron slave collar was found at the house, a grim artefact that's now at the National Maritime Museum and a photograph is part of the museum's online collection. It's conceivable it was the property of Benjamin's nephew, Walter Spencer-Stanhope, who inherited the estate and was elected to Parliament where he championed the abolition of slavery, alongside his friend and fellow Yorkshire MP William Wilberforce. ⠀
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Later Spencer-Stanhopes were an arty bunch and helped John Ruskin set up the little museum in the estate village of Cawthorne, a fabulous cabinet of curiosities, and the only survivor of Ruskin's dream of a national network of village museums. ⠀
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But back to the kitchen garden. In 1951 Cannon Hall was sold to Barnsley Metropolitan Council, which has run it ever since as an event venue, gallery and country park. The Georgian walled garden houses a collection of over forty varieties of pear trees, but maintaining a kitchen garden this big is a big and expensive undertaking. This part of it has been turned over to wild flowers and the Victorian glasshouse is in ruins. But it's colourful, great for pollinators and an atmospheric place to relax. ⠀
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#lostlanes #kitchengarden #lln30places #Yorkshire

Onwards and upwards. Cucumber plants reaching for

Onwards and upwards. Cucumber plants reaching for the sky.
#growyourown #cucumber

We're into the home straight now with the last six

We're into the home straight now with the last six of my special places from my new book #LostLanesNorth. This, the 25th, is from Ride No.25 "A Calder Caper", a short but intensely varied route from Hebden Bridge over the Pennine watershed and back again through some of the lostest lanes of the Upper Calder Valley.⠀
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My special place is the Rain Stone, a fabulous elephantine slab of weather worn gritstone, part of a disused quarry on Blackstone Edge bang on the Lancashire/Yorkshire boundary. Finds of neolithic axeheads show that this has been a place of comings and goings for thousands of years. The stagecoaches came this way, and the White House pub is still there. Daniel Defoe was caught in a snowstorm here. In August. Chartists walked here in their tens of thousands to rally the cause of a better society.⠀ ⠀

And here, beside a string of reservoirs, is a gravel track with sunset views over the glass and steel towers of Manchester and, on a fine day, the Clwydian Range of north-east Wales. ⠀

But the Rain Stone is not about fine days. It's one of six poems about the weather by Simon Armitage, who hales from over the M62 in Marsden. His words are carved in stone by Pip Hall. The collection is called the Stanza Stones and there's a 47-mile walking trail from Marsden to Ilkley that passes all six stones. Critics have decried it as high class graffiti. But I like it. They are all on cast off quarry stone - debris from industry that was once to be found right across the Pennines. I like Armitage. He is a deep thinker but an accessible poet. A walker and a talker. A perfect choice for Poet Laureate. I'll post "Rain" in the comments. ⠀
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I came here in the golden hour of a late summer evening. The sun's last low beams were glancing off the electricity pylons and striping ripples on the reservoirs. A couple with ropes and harnesses were climbing other side of the rock where there's a decent sized vertical face. I read the poem, scrambled to the top of the rock took it all in, and rode on, absent mindedly leaving my camera tripod in the long grass. ⠀
#lln30places #BlackstoneEdge #StanzaStones #poetry

The 24th of my special places from #LostLanesNorth

The 24th of my special places from #LostLanesNorth is from Ride No. 24 "Wuthering Heights" a sort of packhorses-and-Brontës romp around the hills to the west and north of Hebden Bridge. Wycoller is somewhere I didn't know a whole lot about when I picked it out on the map. It is a hamlet centred on Wycoller Hall, now a ruin, and the village, if you can call it that, is closed to outside traffic and is a sort of country park. ⠀
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When I visited on a sunny May morning it felt like an enchanted place. The stream is crossed by three bridges of increasing antiquity - a packhorse bridge with its thick gritstone slabs worn smooth by passing hoofs and feet. A clapper bridge of big flat stones, built in the way a three year old might build a bridge out of wooden blocks. A little further upstream is the more unusual and older 'Clam Bridge', a span of one slab of stone, possibly prehistoric (finds of flint tools and axe heads at Wycoller indicate that there was a community here from as early as the Stone Age). ⠀ ⠀

Wycoller Hall is the inspiration for Ferndean Manor in Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre. She lived just over the hill in Haworth (which comes later in the ride) and would have know this place. I'll put her description of the approach in the comments below. The building is roofless now but there's just enough of it left to imagine it as a place where wealthy people might have lived elegant lives - the neatly carved stone window frames stand out. A scene from the film of the Railway Children was filmed here, in which Jenny Agutter's character is seen sitting on the bridge as the doctor passes on his pony and trap. ⠀
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But you could never know any of the history or cultural associations of this place and still find it beguiling. The gravel track that continues beyond the Wycoller is good, lined with some huge and terrifying beech trees and lots of bluebells (in May). After a bit of very moderate rough stuff it pops you out at the 'col de Watersheddles' above Haworth. ⠀
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#lln30places #lancashire #wycoller #cycling #cycletouring #lostlanes

The 23rd special place from #LostLanesNorth is not

The 23rd special place from #LostLanesNorth is not an under-the-radar choice but somewhere that everyone should visit at least once. Saltaire is a mid-ride stop on Ride No.23, which is a kind of cycling paean to Yorkshire. From Leeds following the traffic free canal towpath through the once mighty industrial heart of the West Riding, before striking uphill onto Ilkley Moor. ⠀ ⠀

Saltaire was the expression of one man's vision for a better way to run a factory. He had his giant textile mills built from stone and iron to reduce the chances of fire. The town's neat rows of workers' houses were luxurious compared to the slums of nearby Bradford. He built a grand, Italianate church and civic amenities including a bath-house, a hospital, institutes for recreation and education including a library, a concert hall, a billiard room, a science laboratory and a gymnasium, allotments, parkland, sports grounds and boating lake. Salt embodied the Victorian ideal of the patrician industrialist. And yet, and yet. It was still capitalism. The work was hard and the days were long. ⠀
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Salt's Mill stopped producing cloth in 1986. Mills across the North became empty husks awaiting demolition. Some were given a new purpose, a new lease of life, and none more than Salt's Mill, thanks to Jonathan Silver, a Bradford entrepreneur with a love of the arts and a life-long friendship with schoolfriend David Hockney. Silver died young and never saw the full fruition of his dream, but he must stand equal with Sir Titus in the story of Saltaire. Today it's an airy and colourful complex of art galleries, cafes, restaurants and shops with the biggest permanent collection of Hockney paintings in the world. And it's all free to see. ⠀
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This was once the largest industrial building in the world. And it feels it as you approach it on a bike along the canal. But it is almost quaint compared to giant factory-campuses in China. Fuji-ta is the largest bicycle manufacturer in the world, and its Tianjin plant covers 300 acres. Saltaire - factory AND village - was just 20 acres. It makes you think. ⠀
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#lln30places #lostlanes #yorkshire #saltaire #saltsmill #davidhockney ⠀

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