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 →

Bradford: Currying favour with cyclists

We've explored Bradford by bike many times. Of Yorkshire’s seven cities (Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, York, Hull, Wakefield, and, er...) it’s the most surprising and intriguing, thanks to its ethnically diverse history (...ah yes, Ripon), from Little Germany to the authentic, tasty curry restaurants that feel like you’ve stepped into Pakistan (where 1 in 5 residents trace their origins). Colourful indeed, in the best sense of the word, as a previous visit to see the Diwali illuminations (pic) joyously celebrated.



Thanks to redevelopment it has a rather fabulous central square (pic), with a family-friendly paddling pool/ fountain, a fine photo gallery (Impressions), and the outstanding, free, National Science and Media Museum. There’s a Wetherspoon too, so all needs are catered for.

The Museum was, indeed, our main reason for going there today. An evening event there – all free – involved among other things our playing a real game of Tetris with large foam blocks (pic), enjoying a science rapper, and sampling the very promising early single malts from Yorkshire’s first whisky distillery.

(They’re based just outside Bridlington, so stand by for a whisky’n’cycling blog post on them soon...)

However, on dropping in to see some friends at Bradford’s excellent Capital of Cycling, we learned of something new. CoC does great work in a characteristically Bradford way, with resilience and energy, promoting cycling for all social and ethnic sectors, including refugees, on a minuscule budget and with reassuring success.

At their salubrious city-centre office complex – OK, the derelict warehouse that used to be a cheap shoe megastore – we were urged to try the recently opened Cycle Superhighway extension (pic).



CS1 already runs from Leeds to Bradford, offering – if not always quite delivering – a fast, safe, segregated, London-style cycleway linking the two centres. The new extension continues for a few miles from just behind Forster Square station to the canal towpath at Shipley. It’s among the very finest cycleways in British terms (pic), so in other words, almost adequate in Dutch terms.



Surprisingly for British infrastructure, cyclists have priority at most junctions (pic). Even more surprisingly, most motorists seemed to respect this. We’d had many unpleasant experiences with impatient drivers when riding this route in the past, pre-CS1, and it made for a very positive change.



Towards Shipley the cycleway reverts to pathways through parkland (pic), which seemed to us far busier with walkers, joggers, cyclists and skaters than in the past. Yes, get your kicks here: it’s Route 66.



The final few hundred yards, joining the Leeds-Liverpool canal, isn’t quite complete (pic). It looks like Banksy himself has been here, to celebrate the enterprise. Not that he really has, obviously. It just looks like it.



The CS1 extension now enables a grand cycling loop: from Leeds station to Bradford city centre, then up to Shipley and back to Leeds along the canal. An interesting round trip, largely traffic-free, of about 26 miles. Which may take you all day, depending on how tempted by curry you are. Much more pleasant by bike than by car – and probably quicker, too (pic).

Bradford tends to get a bad press, and certainly it has its economic and social challenges.

But we’ve always found it a vibrant, friendly, enjoyable place to visit. In fact, it’s our destination of choice for romantic weekends, possibly for the curry options, possibly for the availability of £30 rooms at Premier Inn. The gradual improvement of its cycling facilities is doing no harm to that.

As we say in Urdu, سائیکلنگ مبارک ہو!!

Ingleton: Taking a Peak

So. I was cycling round Ingleton, nestled between the Forest of Bowland and the Yorkshire Dales 50 miles northwest of Leeds, exploring routes for a well-known bike magazine. If you wish you could make a living doing this, well, so do I.

Surrounded by spectacular limestone landscapes, the village is a centre for groups walking the popular 'Three Peaks' circuit (Ingleborough, Whernside and Pen-y-ghent), often for charity.

Perhaps too popular. Locals complain of being overrun by visitors, and the loutish behaviour of some of the trophy-summit trampers, and might prefer that their charity began at home. And stayed there.

Maybe such good-cause mayhem is why the spectacular old railway viaduct across the centre of the village (pic) is closed off to the public: after a few celebratory drinks in the Wheatsheaf, the temptation to lark around on the parapets might prove too much. At least Cave Rescue is only a handful of miles away in Clapham. A charity worth supporting.

Anyway, one of my routes on test was a simple, easy circuit of the Three Peaks by bike – not to climb them, but to see them best as possible from the saddle. The sort of ride that can be easily by done by someone who cycles largely for the excuse to eat cake, drink beer and take amusing pictures. Someone such as me.



I set off up Oddie's Lane, which like every other virtually car-free back road I cycled in the area, is astonishingly smooth fresh tarmac: evidently a Tour de France/Tour de Yorkshire spinoff. You could eat your breakfast off it. But, after the stiff climb out of Ingleton that threatened to shake the bacon butty from Seasons' lovely bakery off my back rack, I was glad I didn't have to. Fortunately the road, and my stomach, levelled out to give thrilling views of Ingleborough (pic).

For cyclists wanting to walk up Ingleborough (723m/2372ft, 3hr return) the place to leave the bike is at the Old Hill Inn, just up from which a path goes to the summit (pic). Walkers have been doing this since the late 1800s, which looks the last time the Inn's exterior was maintained.



Less than a mile up the road is Ribblehead Viaduct (pic), one of Yorkshire's iconic sights. Yes, Yorkshire, despite what Visit Cumbria thinks: I work to the traditional pre-1974 boundaries. I've now been here four times, and each time I'm filled with wonder. I wonder when the rain's going to stop.

The summit of Whernside (736m/2415ft, 2hr return) was somewhere up there in the clouds. It was gloomy, wet and grey, and so was I. There was nowhere to shelter and dry off at all. Except for the adjacent Station Inn pub, which luckily had something flaming yellow, warming, and real: ale. Er, and a fire, too.

A few miles further on clockwise was Horton-in-Ribblesdale, another place descended on by hordes thanks to its place at the foot of Pen-y-ghent. Which, to judge by its name, must be the highest point in Belgium (694m/2277ft, 3hr return, pic).

The famous cafe just by here is sadly closed down since last September, much to the chagrin of walkers wanting their documents stamped, and of cycle bloggers hoping for a warming coffee.



I looped back to Ingleton via a section of the Way of the Roses, the 170-mile coast-to-coast from Morecambe to Bridlington that's said to be the UK's second most popular bike route (the C2C being the first). I did it in April 2010 slightly before it officially opened, getting frozen stiff in Settle and sunburnt in York. This time, passing the quarry near Helwith Bridge, I saw this row of houses whose windows had a spooky glow (pic). It was like being in a 1960s sci-fi film, perhaps as one of those incidental non-speaking roles who come to a horrible end.

Anyway, I got back to Ingleton and celebrated my own Three Peaks circuit – not for charity, in a well-behaved group of 1 – with a pint.



As it happened, two days later I did indeed walk up Ingleton, with my friends Si and Sue (pic). It was a gorgeous, sunny and warm April day. Which was rather worrying, as it was still February.

We also stopped off to admire Gaping Gill (pic), where a river plunges underground to re-emerge a mile away in Clapham village.

It's an astounding, dangerous, apparently bottomless black hole whose appearance seems inexplicable. For some reason I was put in mind of Brexit.

Calder 2: Dewsbury to Castleford

Day 2 of the River Calder ride featured three aspects of Yorkshire: world-renowned sculpture, a traditional Leeds welcome, and riverside rubbish. (Back to ← Day 1)

I stayed in a cheap and cheerful pub room in Dewsbury. It’s said to be one of England's most divided communities, and not only by Brexit: just over the river in an area called Savile Town, 95% are Muslims of Indian or Pakistani background. There were only white faces in the town centre last night though, skulking outside the takeaways or trying fruitlessly to get me to play them at pool.

The beer was £1.90 a pint, but accordingly mediocre: you’d be more likely to find an imam in there than a CAMRA member. The statue in front of the town hall (pic) seems an appropriately despairing comment on things. Perhaps the sculptor had drunk there too. Or was a Remainer.



Anyway, fortified by the pub’s very hearty Full English breakfast, I set off, pleased that my immune system, fortified by regular cycling, would be able to fight off any mild infections cultivated in the kitchen. The Calder Valley Cycleway runs right alongside the river (pic). It’s a gritty sort of landscape: derelict industry, piles of rubbish, and pale, defeated-looking middle-aged white men in beanie hats, such as cycle bloggers whose bacon was underdone and overeaten.



The cycleway continues with quite a climb out of Dewsbury on a newly refurbed path, looking down on the Calder Valley, and took me through the pleasantly pedestrianised market square of Ossett before tracking a railway line and rejoining the riverside just before Wakefield (pic), one of Yorkshire’s seven cities. (The others are Leeds, Bradford, York, Sheffield, Hull, and the one everyone forgets, Ripon.)



West Yorkshire can be gritty and monumental, so it’s appropriate that it provided two of the 20th century’s great sculptors: Barbara Hepworth, from Wakefield, and Henry Moore, from Castleford. Both are celebrated in The Hepworth, Wakefield’s fabulous art gallery, which sits right over the Calder – the view through the windows complements the artworks nicely (pic).

In addition to works by Moore and Hepworth (whose super 1960s screenprints were a bit of a revelation to me) the gallery was exhibiting its Sculpture Prize entries, one of which used water power from the Calder to drive air through a series of pipes to play music. Very nice, though it sounded like a panda trying to mate with a harmonium.

Pandemonium, in other words.¹



The path from Wakefield follows the canal at some times and the river at others, and sometimes both (pic): at Stanley the two cross via a historic early aqueduct and a modern replacement (pic). The old one is on the left: state-of-the-art in its time, it’s now hopelessly heavy, outdated and even unsafe, needing replacement by a new modern one. Funnily enough, the same applies to my bike.

From here it’s railtrail alongside the final stretch of the Calder, going through this splendid gateway welcoming you to Leeds (pic)...

...though a little further on, an anonymous artist has put up this alternative welcome message (pic).

Perhaps this is the 21st-century face of Yorkshire sculpture.



The last mile of the Calder has a newly surfaced bike path going along its southern side (pic), presumably paid for by the developers who are slinging up the housing estate just up from here. My journey was nearing its end.



Finally, after the tarmac ran out, a muddy path took me to the mouth of the Calder (pic). Its junction with the Aire, on the edge of Castleford, is marked by a wooden bench - evidently a good place for a Yorkshire-style picnic, as demonstrated by the vast pile of empty beercans. (Most were Tyskie, but then Yorkshire is probably one of the most populous provinces of Poland. Na zdrowie! Do dna!)

I’ve really enjoyed this leisurely two-day trip. (It’s perfectly possible to do it in one, though you might need more daylight than a North of England January offers.) The Calder has an absorbing mix of Pennine scenery, ruggedly sophisticated mill towns reinventing themselves, powerful art, and down-to-earth, workaday West Yorkshire friendliness.

Plus, of course, cycleways all along it that are among the best in England. A hotchpotch of the barely adequate and the downright awful, in other words. Trying to find good infrastructure! Getting warmer? No, getting Calder!

¹ Vincent, P. (2014) But First the News: The Two Ronnies. Pilot Productions

Miles today: 25
Total miles: 58

Back to ← Day 1

Halifax: Calder mobile

Halifax (pic), home to almost half Calderdale’s 190,000 folk, is not short of associations. Cat’s-eyes; Quality Street; the eponymous bank; the Eureka family attraction; victim of gratuitously infernal slander along with Hull.

For telly viewers it’s the setting of comedy-drama Last Tango in Halifax, while for cyclists it’s the venue of Shibden Wall, a famously tough climb up ferocious West Yorkshire cobbles. I thought about doing that ascent again when I visited this time. That is to say, I thought about doing it last time, too.

I’d come here in the middle of my River Calder ride. Halifax isn’t actually on the Calder – it’s on the Hebble – but then neither is there a Quality Street here: the confection, one of many products of the Mackintosh sweetie empire that grew here, was named after a play by JM Barrie.



I had an appointment to meet up with Andrew Sykes, author of the 'Reggie' cycling travelogues – but first I had a wander round the centre. The library is in an old church, and the splendid rose window (pic) greets you up the stairs as you search in vain for a copy of Bluff Your Way in Cycling. The staff painted an enthusiastic portrait of their town: friendly, lively, rejuvenated. Maybe some of that might rub off on me.

Halifax has a fine selection of Victorian buildings, many of which are being renovated: the market (pic) for instance is having its 1980s modifications stripped out and returned to its original features. Mid-20th century economic doldrums meant that Halifax was not ‘redeveloped’ as brutal concrete blocks, Andrew told me – a benefit, as I know from my time in Bath, which lost more Georgian terraces to the council than it did to the Luftwaffe. It’s meant that those old factory buildings and handsome streetscapes are still there, unrazed, and able to be rescued. The area between the library, station and (blackened and gloomy) Minster is next, apparently.



The most obvious example of Halifax’s citybreak-friendly reboot is the Piece Hall (pic), recently spruced up and now one of the most awesome large public squares in England. It’s a similar size and feel to Salamanca, Andrew and I agreed, though perhaps without the pavement cafes, tapas bars, bell tower, T-shirt weather, and availability of house wine for under a fiver. The Hall’s galleries are home to dozens of boutiques and shoppes. If you’re after artisan jewellery, bespoke gin or fine art this is the place, though on a chilly January weekday afternoon it was very quiet, each unit having a sole occupant at the till who looked up hopefully from their mobile phone as I walked past.

The busiest attraction in the Hall was an Autism Experience van, which offered to give you an insight into what it’s like to be on the spectrum by subjecting you to flashing lights, loud noises and sensory overstimulation. It surprised me how many people were queueing to undergo such an unpleasant experience, but then people queue to get into York’s lagery central pubs of a Saturday evening too.



Piece Hall looked lovely in the evening, I must say (pic). Andrew and I adjourned for a coffee in the Square Chapel next door, and talked cycle-touring most enjoyably. There was a local company function there, with free drinks. Tempting as it was, I didn’t try to pose as an employee. The lycra tights, muddy shorts and tatty mitts might have given me away as an impostor.

Since the 1600s Halifax has been a place to pray for deliverance from, along with Hull (another place benefiting from regeneration) and Hell (which would not qualify for redevelopment funding, being outside the EU). Percy Shaw, the inventor of those cat’s-eyes, might have been the face of Halifax last century – he lived in a house with no carpets or furnishings, just crates of beer and crisps for his pals, and televisions permanently on and tuned to all channels then available. In the eyes of contemporary newspapers this made him an ‘eccentric’. In the eyes of my dad this made him a role model.

But Halifax is changing agreeably. It’s investing a lot of money, and however well it’s working out economically, it certainly makes the place delightful to visit. And yes, there are Wetherspoons here, one of which is called The Percy Shaw. My dad would have approved.