Aire 2: Shipley to Airmyn

Day 2 of the River Aire ride featured a river under a railway station, a tale of three power plants, more reminders of the county’s cycling pre-eminence – and a lot of mud, both under my wheels and at the mouth of the river. (Back to ← Day 1)



I was out bright and early along the canal, heading to Leeds, Yorkshire’s national capital. Wild horses clearly are not the sole preserve of Dartmoor or the New Forest (pic).



The sunshine was low and golden, and it was downhill all the way to Leeds (pic). The towpath is excellent, apart from a fraction of the time where it’s muddy, uneven and puddled. A fraction of about four-fifths.



Approaching the city, I was not alone. It was rush hour, and cyclists and walkers thronged the towpath (pic). Like the joggers, the canal and river run alongside each other.



The Aire thunders dramatically through the catacombs underneath Leeds railway station (pic). Venturing here used to be the preserve of urban explorers; now it’s busy with commuters toting takeaway coffees and explaining on mobiles why they’ll be late in.

The station interior has been remodelled too, and more than ever it’s Yorkshire’s closest glimpse of London, with a shiny concourse and lots of smart young people walking purposefully to the rhythm of money.



There’s now this entrance up from Granary Wharf basin (pic), over the Aire and directly up and into the southern platforms, making it easier than ever to arrive in good time to find Northern have cancelled your train.

It’s here that the Leeds–Liverpool Canal ends, in Granary Wharf (pic).

There’s a water taxi from here to the Armouries: at a quid for the ten-minute journey it’s a great way of sightseeing Aireside Leeds, but getting a bike on would be impossible down the steps.

And anyway I had to go through the centre of town to find a Greggs bacon roll.



The view over the river from Leeds Dock is impressive (pic), and as you leave the city limits the towpath is in good nick. Then it’s back to mud and puddles. There’s also one slightly challenging bridge crossing with steep steps, but a little expertise in scrambling, abseiling, and perhaps dismantling your bike, will make it easier.

The Aire now runs parallel with the Aire and Calder Navigation, whose towpath forms part of the Trans Pennine Trail. It runs past the grand nature park of St Aidan’s, a former opencast mine. If mills were a feature of the upper Aire, heavy industry defined the flavour of the lower Aire from the 1800s to the 1970s. A flavour of sewage, industrial runoff, arsenic, cadmium, etc.

The water quality has improved massively since then, with fish returning to the river. We’ve spent hours in St Aidan’s once or twice in the past, most of it trying to find our way out. Those TPT signs can be pretty contradictory. Goodness knows how the fish find their way.



By dint of ignoring TPT signs and a long muddy snicket, I found my way to Castleford, which has a splendid curvy ped and cycle bridge over the Aire (pic) by the historic Queen’s Mill, once the biggest stonegrinding flour mill in the world. After nearly two days of cycling through mucky water, my bike’s drivetrain was doing a pretty good impression of grinding querns. And felt about as light.



From here the Aire ‘valley’ spreads out into flatlands, the river starts meandering chaotically, and roads give only fleeting views of the waters. And for fans of hyperboloids, good news: the dominant sight now becomes cooling towers, forests of them, in the three huge power stations that sit on the lower Aire: Ferrybridge (pic), Eggborough, and Drax.



But not for long. Ferrybridge C (pic) set fire to its last chunk of coal in 2016. I passed just in time to see these cooling towers intact: four of them were demolished four days later. (Here's the BBC website report and video of it.)



Eggborough (pic) shuffled off into retirement in 2018, but Drax is still going, carrying on the traditional Yorkshire crafts of coal-fired power generation, pollution and unsustainable carbon emissions. Hmm; so much for the Northern Powerhouse.

I enjoyed trundling through the pleasant small towns of Snaith (with a fine church and a lavish number of pubs) and Rawcliffe (with a lovely, picnickable green and some nice frontage on to the Aire). I also had a big tailwind, which helped. So it wasn’t long before I rolled into Airmyn, on the river’s mouth – indeed, the suffix ‘-myn’ evidently is an old word for ‘-mouth’.



Airmyn is inspiringly enthusiastic about cycling: the entire riverside, in the Aire’s final stretch, is dotted with yellow and blue bikes (pic). It felt an appropriate end to my ride. Passing the handsome clock tower I passed a sign saying Please respect the welfare of the pigs by shutting the gate. Their well-being duly respected, I walked along a footpath to the end of the Aire and the very end of the trip.



This is the mouth, where the Aire joins the Ouse just north of Goole (pic). A suitably muddy but large-scale finish to Yorkshire’s most industrial river, and perhaps the one with most variety of sights. It’s a lake! It’s a river! It’s a canal! It disappears and comes back!

So, I cycled on to Howden, another fine town with a glorious minster and attached ruins, and enjoyed a pint brewed in Snaith for £3.10 before my train home.

Another very enjoyable rivers ride, and given the amount of bumpy offroad and towpath riding, I chose the perfect bike for it (my trekker, an adapted Scott MX1 MTB with front suspension and 42mm tyres). Once I’ve cleaned it I might remember what colour it’s supposed to be.

Miles today: 55
Miles in all: 100

Back to ← Day 1

Aire 1: Malham to Shipley

River Aire

Source   Tarn Foot, Malham
Mouth   River Ouse, Airmyn
Length   92 miles
Towns   Skipton, Keighley, Shipley, Leeds, Castleford, Knottingley
Route   See on Ridewithgps

The fourth of my Rivers Rides was a splendid two-day, 100-mile trip from Yorkshire's one-lake Lake District to its three-power-station powerhouse along the River Aire. Day 1 featured England’s highest lake, a disappearing river, stunning canal scenery, floods, a fairy story, a World Heritage Site and a Wetherspoon. (On to Day 2 →)



This is the source of the Aire (pic): the glacial beauty of Malham Tarn, 377m up on the roof of some of the country’s most dramatic limestone scenery. Welcome to Yorkshire’s Lake District, even if there is only one lake. Yorkshire’s Titicaca, even if it’s a bit lower down.



It’s fed by springs running off the surrounding slopes (pic). It was remarkable to think, as I pedalled up the steep hill from Malham, that the drizzle which wasn’t working its way into my sandwiches would find its way into the tarn, and thence downward a hundred miles to the North Sea. How does it know where to go?



The Aire starts here – if not quite in name yet – at Tarn Foot, at the southern end of the lake (pic). But a few hundred metres later, a very strange thing happens...



...because it ducks under a wall (pic)...

...and dives down into a bed of nettles (pic).

And then, like a dodgy diplomat’s wife evading responsibility for a fatal driving accident, it just disappears.

So, from here I zoomed down the steep back lanes to the wondrous village of Malham, which I talk about in a previous post on this blog.

A couple of hundred metres south of Malham, along a boggy footpath, at a place entertainingly called Aire Head, another very strange thing happens...



...because, like a dodgy insurance fraudster canoeist turning up in Panama without a paddle, the Aire springs out of the ground (pic), all innocent like, 1500m south and 180m lower from where we last saw it. Where’s it been? What’s it been doing? Nobody knows.

At least we know that it is that same Aire which started out like butter wouldn’t melt back at the lake. That’s because, in the 19th century, they dammed Tarn Foot to see what would happen. Sure enough, Aire Head went very quiet, then – half an hour after the dam was removed – it gushed again.



Now the river gets going, winding its way down some fine dales scenery (pic). The cows are clearly rubbish meteorologists: all standing, yet it was a day of constant drizzly showers. With sunny intervals in between. One of those days when you simply can’t decide whether to be in or out of your rainjacket. Taking back control is an illusion. Yet another metaphor for Brexit.

Hauling myself from Bell Busk to Gargrave over Mark House Lane – described as a ‘bridleway’ on the OS map but perhaps more accurately called a ‘stream’ – I enjoyed seeing this rainbow (pic).

No crock of gold, but a crock of something else, thanks to the cow-friendly farmyard I’d mistakenly ridden through while getting my bearings.

At least the stream’s abundant waters washed my wheels and lower frame as I clattered down the track.



In Gargrave, I joined the towpath of the Leeds–Liverpool (pic), England’s longest single canal, which follows the Aire valley all the way to Yorkshire’s capital. They’re resurfacing it, though the stretch east between here and Skipton (and east from Skipton to Silsden) is still unmodified, bumpy mud.

Anyway, the towpath was closed for the refurb works for cyclists’ safety, but luckily there is an alternative, viz the busy, HGV-infested, semi-lethal A65.



Skipton (pic) is a handsome, likeable market town with a picturesque canal basin, lots of fish and chip shops, friendly locals who direct you when you get lost, and a superb statue of Fred Trueman, the greatest fast bowler who ever lived, in the opinion of experts such as Fred Trueman. Post-cricket, he made a successful career as a professional Yorkshireman.

I love the statue – it brilliantly evokes the man's delivery-stride swagger, momentum and poise. The work – by Yorkshire sculptor Graham Ibbeson – is one of the best examples of that modern thing of a statue celebrating the idol in action (see also Morecambe, Eric); not standing statically, like those mutton-chopped Victorian blokes, or menacing colonial generals.

The only thing it lacks is a speech bubble of Fred roaring, ‘Tha’s aat, Gunga Din. Get thissen back to t’ pavilion. Join me next week in Indoor League. Ah’ll sithee’.



From here to Silsden I avoided the quaggy towpath and followed minor roads along Airedale, which afforded splendid views of the scenery, and the flooded valley (pic). I went through roadwork signs outside Cononley saying ROAD CLOSED because, of course, you can always get through on a bike, and, of course, I could.

Several drivers ignored the signs too because, of course, they think the signs don’t apply to them, and, of course, they couldn’t.

I heard the drivers arguing in vain with the roadworks crew who all spoke with friendly but impenetrable Polish accents. Then I realised they were actually Scousers.



In Silsden I got back on the L–L towpath (pic), now surfaced, continuing its scenic paralleling of the Aire itself. Then it rained again and the towpath got muddy again. But I was on my trekking bike and I was happy.

Outside Bingley I enjoyed the sheer drop down Five Rise Locks (pic).

This is Britain’s most vertiginous stretch of towpath at 20%, and done rather quicker by bike than by boat.

Even uphill. Even me.



Bingley itself pleasantly surprised me, partly for its impressive weir where the Aire is bridged (pic), partly for its inviting and vibrant-looking main street shops.

Alas, I didn’t have time to stop, because I then diverted through Cottingley, intent on researching the village’s famously elusive real genuine authentically faked fairies, which I’ve blogged about separately.

A little further on is Saltaire, Titus Salt’s Victorian model village for the workers at his grand Aire-powered mills (pic), now a World Heritage Site.

The puddles are great for reflecting the austere grandeur of the mill buildings. They’re less great to keep cycling through.

The back streets of Salt’s model terraces commemorate family members and mill workers.

They charmingly recall names popular in Victorian times, such as Ada, Herbert, Amelia, Fanny, Albert, and Upper Mary.



Saltaire’s characterful houses (pic), top of the range for their time, were complemented by facilities such as bathhouses and a hospital. Titus wasn’t having any pubs, though. So what he’d have made of the Wetherspoon in neighbouring Shipley where I enjoyed a £2 post-ride pint or two is anyone’s guess.

It had been a very good day, with a wide range of scenery, sights and refreshment opportunities. As I sat on my comfy bed, post-shower, in my bargain single room in a modest Shipley hotel, I congratulated myself at how fresh and energetic I felt after forty-odd miles of mostly offroad, fairly strenuous cycling. Only half past seven, I thought: I could go out and have a night exploring Shipley’s pubs.

Instead I went to bed, one of many good decisions I made today, and fell asleep immediately.

Miles today: 45

On to Day 2 →

Cottingley: Fairy story

The suburban village of Cottingley, a few miles northwest of Bradford, is one of those placenames you can’t help mentally auto-completing. Ilkley Moor... Baht ’at; Piltdown... Man; Loch Ness... Monster.

And, thanks to capers by the stream in the back garden of this house (pic) in Main St, Cottingley... Fairies.

Because in the 1920s, after being published by the Strand magazine, photos of sprites dancing with two local girls down by Cottingley Beck went viral. They convinced many – including spiritualist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – that here was evidence of the world beyond, rather than girlish mischief with paper, crayons and scissors.

They were not-very-deep fakes, of course: light-hearted hoaxes contrived in summer 1917 by Elsie Wright, then 16, and her cousin Frances Griffiths, 9.

Elsie, a talented artist who worked in a photographic studio and knew how to stage a good portrait, drew figures on card and propped them up with hatpins for the photoshoot to make her father smile.

(‘Fairies at the bottom of the garden’ was a phrase evidently in currency then: Rose Fyleman's poem of that title had just been published in Punch magazine.)

To the jaded 21st-century eye, as they were to Elsie’s dad, the photos are obvious phoneys. We live in a wiser age now, where nobody could be fooled by, say, anti-vax campaigns, flat-earthism, climate change denial or empty promises on the side of a bus.

Nevertheless, even though contemporary cynics pointed out the hairstyles were suspiciously human and fashionable for other-dimensional elfs, for decades the photos fooled the sort of people (including Elsie’s mum) who believe you when you tell them the word 'gullible' isn't in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The cousins, evidently embarrassed at the family jape taking on a life of its own, went along with the story and no doubt hoped it would all blow over and be forgotten. It didn’t and it wasn’t. Finally, in the 1980s, Elsie wearily fessed up.

By odd coincidence, the house is now owned by the graphic novel artist Luke Horsman, who was unaware of the house’s history of fantasy and pictorial artifice when he bought it.

Sadly, the only access to the beck is in the back gardens of houses of Main St and of the new housing estate nearby, making it hard for anyone wanting to re-enact the Great Fairy Photo Hoax. The only public glimpse of the watercourse is from a bridge (pic) on Lysander Way, in that new estate.



Also on the estate are Oberon Way (pic)...



...and Titania Close (pic): a Shakespeare fan and fairy devotee evidently had fun when choosing the street names one midsummer night).

However, that’s about all you’ll get for puckish sights in Cottingley. Main St has a barber and a hair stylist, which might offer pixie cuts I suppose, and the beauty salon could give you a daintily spriteful look, though not me. But fairy-themed specials from the fish and chip shop, Beckside Fisheries, are not on the menu. The local pub, the Sun Inn, seems to have closed down, so no pints of Fairy Liquid from any Cottingley Brewery.

If there were fairies with magic powers down by the beck, I think I know what wish locals would ask to be granted: to make the village’s crushing rush-hour traffic jams disappear. But, as everyone knows, fairies – and magic wands – don't exist. Especially in urban transport planning.

Nun Monkton: Lighter moments

I’d wanted to ride the new Nun Monkton Ferry, over the Ouse about eight miles northwest of York (pic), for ages. Particularly when I found they welcome bikes.

In the 1800s, Yorkshire’s (and England’s) rivers were plied with tiny boat crossings. There apparently were seven between Aldwark Bridge and Nun Monkton alone. Now there are only a handful left in the country. The old service from Nun Monkton to Beningborough closed over 70 years ago.



But, in 2017, it was revived as a community project on weekends through summer. It now shuttles the triangle across the Ouse and the mouth of the Nidd (pic) from the village of Nun Monkton, which I cycled to a couple of years ago, to Beningborough Hall and to Moor Monkton.

You can’t board or disembark with a bike at Beningborough Hall, so I approached from the south, via Moor Monkton. The network of bridleways promised by the OS map proved to be mostly too rough or overgrown, or nonexistent, and it took me longer than expected to get there from York.

I got lost in a wood at one point, emerging back where I’d been long before and without a clue what direction I was taking, which seems yet another metaphor for Brexit.

The Vale of York is great for people with heart conditions: flat, dull, straight roads (pic) linking unspectacular farms with nothing in the way of shocks or surprises.

Well, except for collies being walked off the leash convinced I was an errant sheep needing to be rounded up.

It was a hot, cloudless day, and summer was going out in a blaze of blue glory. The ferry — barge? lighter? — glided across to the muddy bank on the Moor Monkton side, the ramp coming down to invite me aboard (pic).

Lifejackets are worn for the two-minute-long crossing, though there wasn’t time to buy any duty-free.



The fare is a nominal £2. Now, you could argue this works out even more expensive per minute than the notoriously pricy Isle of Wight ferry (Portsmouth to Ryde on the catamaran is £15.60 for the 22 minute crossing). But it’s money very well spent, a scenic, quirky and delightful little experience (pic) with friendly locals.

And — particularly for visitors to Beningborough Hall — it’s a very convenient way of nipping across to the picturesque village of Nun Monkton for less than the price of a bacon sarnie in the Hall cafe. Though even a ride on Eurostar is cheaper than the price of a bacon sarnie in the Hall cafe.

And every journey helps subsidise the not-for-profit venture, run by volunteers, and thus helps to keep locals of a certain age who’d otherwise be at a loose end out of mischief, by which I mean me.

Nun Monkton is a lovely little village with a very big green, and an extremely tall maypole — in fact the country’s tallest (pic) at 27m. There's also a pub noted for its food, the Alice Hawthorn, though I was more interested in its beer.

With the day’s sheepdog encounters in mind, I had a pint of Black Sheep.

Which cost rather more than ferry trip and, thanks to the thirst of a hot day’s riding, lasted rather less time.

Wharfe 2: Bolton Abbey to Cawood

Day 2 of the River Wharfe ride featured a cyclists’ favourite back lane, the inadvisability of no headgear, a beer town’s strange tendency for unfinished bridges, and the unscenic dénouement of this most scenic of rivers in a field. (Back to ← Day 1)

As I was camping last night, I had the bike fully loaded — front and back panniers, tent on the back rack. It’s been a couple of years since I had it so laden, and it was actually quite nice to get back to traditional touring — totally self-contained, heavy and lumbering.



After a rainy night, I had a sunny morning for my spin down the back road (pic) between Bolton Abbey and Ilkley — a local cyclists’ favourite, to judge by the number of friendly waves and mornings from riders, who vastly outnumbered vehicles. Even sheep.

Them thar hills in the distance are Ilkley Moor, a place of legendary inadvisability for venturing without proper headgear. As for me, I wasn’t sure what was most suitable for today’s changeable weather. A sunhat with guttering, probably.



Ilkley is middle-class enough to have a branch of Booths. I don’t recommend driving there, though. By the time you've fought your way back home through the town's jammed roads, that fresh food will be past its sell-by.

Anyway, I stopped for a coffee in The Commute, the cool bike-café that offers that elusive combination of copies of Rouleur magazine, a cycle workshop, and beetroot lattes. My snack downriver in Otley’s pleasant central square (pic) was a more prosaic sausage roll from Gregg’s.



The look and feel of these Lower Wharfedale towns is fairly similar, and Wetherby’s courtyard-like centre (pic) came as a nice suprise after having cycled through its humdrum outskirts in the past.

From here the land flattens out (pic), as the river starts to wind its way laconically to the Vale of York. And the drivers get more impatient and try to pass you no matter how tight and narrow the bend ahead. I followed A-roads to classy Boston Spa, home of ‘Georgian architecture and riverside walks’ according to the info boards.

I was keen to see the Wharfe’s newest bridge (pic). As part of a housing development last year, the builders refurbished the old railway bridge over the river at Newton Kyme, just south of Thorp Arch Trading Estate (home to the British Library’s Yorkshire outpost).

It’s now on a fine walking and cycling path that leads from, er, the main road outside Tadcaster to, um, a totally unsigned, muddy footpath. Until the council links it to the half-decent railtrail that runs from here north to Wetherby, only locals in the know — or particularly adventurous cycle bloggers who spend ten minutes hacking through undergrowth on the southern side — use the bridge.



In fact, Tadcaster seems to specialise in haphazard crossings of the Wharfe. On a previous ride I stopped to admire the old railway viaduct (pic, in distance) which never quite got round to carrying passenger trains, while the town’s main bridge over the river (pic, parapet) was infamously washed away by floods in 2015 and only reopened in 2017.

The delay was largely down to intransigence of local brewing magnate Humphrey Smith, the shadowy boss of Sam Smith’s, one of many ale factories in the town. As I was following the Wharfe, it seemed appropriate to sample a beer made from the very waters I’d been riding. I nipped into the Angel and White Horse in the centre of town and had a pint of their famously cheap brew (£2 for a pint of bitter). A very budget-friendly way to drink, especially as you don't particularly want another one.

Like all their pubs, all tech — smartphones, laptops, iPads etc — are strictly banned, to encourage conversation. To judge by all the single blokes sat nursing their £2 pint alone, it wasn’t working.



I was nearing the end of the trip. The Wharfe winds unspectacularly from Tadcaster through flat farmland; the last glimpse you can get from the road is in, and shortly after, the village of Ryther (pic).



This is the mouth of the Wharfe (pic), as it joins the Ouse just outside Cawood. I had to leave the bike and plod along the river bank for a few hundred yards to find it. Hardly the Ganges delta; in fact, a rather ordinary end to a watercourse whose first half is one of the loveliest riverscapes in England.

I just had time to take a snap or two and get back to the bike before a deluge arrived. I sat it out in a bus shelter with a sandwich. Like I said, it’s been good to get back to traditional cycle touring.

Miles today: 60
Miles in all: 102

Back to ← Day 1

Wharfe 1: Beckermonds to Bolton Abbey

River Wharfe

Source   Oughtershaw Beck, Beckermonds
Mouth   River Ouse, Cawood
Length   65 miles
Towns   Ilkley, Otley, Wetherby, Tadcaster
Route   See on Ridewithgps

The third of my Rivers Rides was a beautiful two-day, 102-mile trip from Dales highlands to York flatlands along the River Wharfe. Day 1 featured England’s most awesome viaduct, a Roman road, thrilling scenery, beer for dogs, an unpronounceable village, a superbly ruined Abbey, and the world’s most dangerous river. Allegedly. (On to Day 2 →)



Yorkshire’s — and therefore England’s — most awesome viaduct is, of course, Ribblehead (pic). Every time I come here, it’s different. Sometimes it’s heavy rain; sometimes it’s only light rain. Today was a light-rain day. It looks a bit sunnier on those ‘A Yorkshire Year’ calendars. Clearly the photographers have access to more accurate weather forecasts than the BBC website’s pack of lies.



From Ribblehead I climbed steadily up the track to Cam Fell (pic), with Pen-y-Ghent moving strangely around behind me like a hitman in the rear-view mirror. The Wharfe starts out on these slopes, as rain trickling down to Oughtershaw Beck on its long journey to the Vale of York. In the middle of nowhere, the track mysteriously becomes a smooth tarmac road (a Roman road, indeed) which takes you up to Fleet Moss — a legendarily tough climb for cyclists who, unlike me, don’t keep stopping to take pictures and eat sandwiches.



The Wharfe proper starts here (pic): the confluence of Green Field Beck and Oughtershaw Beck — ‘Ottershaw’? ‘Ortershaw’? ‘Outershaw’? There was nobody around to ask, except Dales Way walkers with better rainproofs but no more idea of local pronunciation.



The sun gradually came out, and Upper Wharfedale looked lovely (pic). I had it to myself apart from anglers and sheep bleating. The bleating of the anglers was worse.



Wharfedale’s upper villages are postcard-pic staples. Buckden (pic) could almost be in Scotland. Obviously you can’t get haggis in the chip shops here, but on the other hand the nearest bagpiping busker is 123 miles away at Carter Bar, so swings and roundabouts.

Kettlewell is well-known to cyclists for its position at the foot of Park Rash, a notoriously steep climb, but there’s no better way enjoy Wharfedale.

Except perhaps to do what I did: dodge a rain shower by sheltering in the Blue Bell, and having a pint of the stuff (pic).

A barrel outside offered dog beer of sorts: ‘Pooch Brew (0%)’ on tap into a bowl. Non-alcoholic, as of course they probably have work rounding up sheep later on.



Grassington is a popular tourist village (pic), thanks to its pleasant cobbled centre which would be a lot more pleasant if there weren’t so many damn cars parked there. And ones trying to. Splendid Linton Falls are nearby; I found them rather underwhelming, and only later realised I’d gone to the mundane hydroelectric plant upstream by mistake. It pays to do your research. That’s probably why I’m skint.



Further down, the village of Burnsall looked delightful in the sun, with visitors picnicking and strolling its Wharfeside green (pic). A little further on is Appletreewick, pronounced by the locals ‘Aptrick’. Or, after a pint in the gloriously olde-worlde, cruck-barned Craven Arms (‘Gateway to the Ales’), ‘Appick’. Or, after a well-kept pint of Theakston’s Old Peculier, ‘Apshk’.

South of Appletreewick, I followed the riverside path — pushing, in accordance with the wishes of the signs — through Bolton Abbey park.

This view of Barden Tower, the ruin in the distance, inspired a JMW Turner painting.

He travelled around here in 1808, making many sketches and watercolours. Art lovers and cartographers alike have been amazed at how geographically accurate they are: in short, not very much.



A little north of Bolton Abbey is the world’s most dangerous stretch of water. No, really. According to some. (Though according to some, leaving the European Union was going to be the easiest deal in human history.) The Strid (pic) is where the placid, wide Wharfe turns angry, and sideways, as it forces its way through some jagged limestone rocks.

Many, many people have been tempted to do something foolish here, such as write articles about the thousands of lives the Strid has claimed, only to find to their horror that there’s only evidence for a dozen or so. Compared to the danger of crossing roads, say, which do claim thousands of lives, a year, but which tend to be overlooked by our deluded car-centric society. That said, I wouldn’t try jumping across here if I were you.



My glorious day ride finished at Bolton Abbey (pic), where many hundreds of visitors, having miraculously cheated death at the Strid, were strolling round the ruins’ pleasant grounds. I spent a very sociable evening camping round the corner here along with my sister-in-law and her boys, meeting lots of new people. Because we were playing cricket, and I had a lot of big hits to retrieve that had rolled into people’s tents.

Miles today: 42

On to Day 2 →