Cycling in Yorkshire & Beyond
Cycling in Yorkshire & Beyond
This book of Bike Rides in the Yorkshire Dales has four family rides, ten road rides, and six mountain bike rides.
There's a navigation page on Hedgehog Cycling for each ride, with maps which you can zoom in and out, and GPS files to upload to a device.
The book is packed with colour photos. There's information about the landscapes, towns and villages you pass through, the people who have shaped them, and the wildlife that thrives there.
Bike Rides in and Around York is available in paperback. These are the options:
Bike Rides in the Yorkshire Dales has twenty rides in total.
Each ride is given a flapjack rating - how many flapjacks you need to keep your energy levels up. The ratings are from one flapjack (very easy) to five flapjacks (very difficult).
The family bike rides are intended to be quite easy, and low-traffic. I always include café suggestions.
Among the family rides are the ever-popular Bolton Abbey, and the Swale Trail.
The road bike rides range from 15 miles to 68 miles. Inevitably since it's the Yorkshire Dales, the routes are hilly; I feel that Dales miles are worth more than cycling miles in other places.
One of the road ride highlights is Echoes of Stage 1, which tackles the three Dales climbs from Stage 1 of the 2014 Tour de France, plus a bonus climb to create a loop.
The road rides explore the whole National Park, including the 2016 expansion into Cumbria.
The bridleways in the Dales offer a huge range of off-road options. Rides do need careful planning, though, because some of the tracks are just too steep, and others are in a terrible state of repair.
The six rides in the book are a good introduction to mountain biking in the Dales, rather than a comprehensive guide.
The Bainbridge Round and Arkengarthdale rides are particular highlights.
Each chapter begins with a Trip Overview, featuring distance, flapjack rating (difficulty), duration, hills and stops.
There's an overview map of each ride in the book, plus a link to more resources on this website which include:
There are feature boxes for each ride.
Blue boxes contain information about people, places or points of interest along the route. Examples include the Bolton Abbey, Dent, Lead Mining in Swaledale and Arkengarthdale, Bolton Castle, and Stage 1 of the Tour de France 2014.
Green boxes are for natural features and wildlife - for example salmon at Stainforth Force, Grass Wood, Malham Cove, caves in Kingsdale, and red squirrels in the Yorkshire Dales.
The book is packed with images, to give a flavour of the countryside you ride through and - I hope - motivate you to get out and explore it.
The Yorkshire depicted in the book is sunny more often than it is in real life.
Total page count: 240 pages.
Sample content is available on Amazon via Look Inside.
Here's a list of the rides in Bike Rides in the Yorkshire Dales.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was going to name his fictional detective Sherrinford Holmes, but changed his mind at the last moment.
The author's mother lived at Masongill near Ingleton, and two of his sisters were at school in Ingleton.
Randal Sherlock was struck by lightning and killed at Ingleton Station. One of Randal's sons, Thomas, was the vicar at St Mary's Ingleton, and another, Cornelius, was the architect who redesigned the church.
Conan Doyle must have known the Sherlock family. You may deduce the reason why he changed his hero's name from Sherrinford to Sherlock.
Because of his family connection to Ingleton, Conan Doyle married his first wife Louisa at St Oswald's church, Thornton-in-Lonsdale (1885). The reception was at the Marton Arms.
Conan Doyle was a doctor and surgeon. He played in goal for Portsmouth and was an early skiing enthusiast in Switzerland. He believed in life after death and spirit communication.
The cheapest way to buy the paperback of Bike Rides In and Around York is direct from the Hedgehog Cycling shop.
Payment is through secure payment gateways provided by PayPal and Stripe. You can pay using your PayPal account or with a debit or credit card.
Alternatively, you can buy the book from Amazon at £15 + P&P.
If you have any questions about the book, please get in touch using the contact form.