Cycling in Yorkshire
Cycling in Yorkshire
This York City Tour by Bike is Ride 1 in the book Bike Rides In and Around York.
The book gives a full commentary on the sights and points of interest on the tour, as well as a Brief History of York. It also features 17 other bike rides in and around York.
Below, there's a map, and a link to the GPS file which you can download, plus brief details of the points of interest on the tour.
Distance: 6.5 miles
Time: 1h/variable
This is a Google map of the York City Tour By Bike.
The original route is shown in gold. Terry Avenue re-opened in May 2022 after an extended closure, and I then added a revised route from Rowntree Park via Terry Avenue to Priory Street, in orange.
Navigation files for this route can be found on Plotaroute.
The history of York begins with the arrival of the Romans in AD71. They built a fort, and the west corner of it was where the Multangular Tower stands.
The Multangular Tower is one of the best-preserved pieces of Roman architecture. It dates not from AD71, but from AD200-300.
Leave the Museum Gardens, wheeling your bike, heading for Museum Street. Turn left, and on your left is St Leonard's Hospital.
A hospital was founded here by Saxon King Athelstan in 937; it later became known as St Leonard's.
It was closely associated with York Minster, and was one of the largest hospitals in Medieval England. It closed at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, in the 1530s.
The site of York Minster was the heart of the Roman fort; the Principia, or HQ building, stood here.
A great hall, or basilica, was part of the Principia, and it had a shrine to the Roman gods who protected soldiers. This site has therefore had a religious function since Roman times.
Look out for one of the basilica's columns, which stands opposite the south door of the Minster.
York has a connection to Emperor Constantine the Great. Constantine's father Constantius I died at York in AD306, and Constantius's soldiers acclaimed Constantine (who may or may not have been in York at the time) as the new Emperor.
After the Romans left around AD409, there was no ruling power. This is called the sub-Roman period.
Then in the early 600s, Angles arrived and settled in York. Anglo-Saxon King Edwin of Northumbria made York his chief city, and in AD627 a wooden Minster church was built here. The first Archbishop of York founded a song school in the same year.
Archbishop of York Walter de Gray ordered the construction of a Gothic Cathedral, and building began in 1220. It was declared finished, and consecrated, in 1472.
There was serious fire damage to the Minster in 1984, with the fire probably caused by a lightning strike. Restoration was completed in 1988.
Guy Fawkes attended the Cathedral school. He attempted to blow up Parliament in 1605. St Peter's School, which traces its history back to the Cathedral school, doesn't put a guy on the bonfire on 5th November: "we don't burn old boys".
Continue on Deangate to Goodramgate.
Turn right down Goodramgate, but note that this is one of York's footstreets from 10.30am to 7pm, so you have to wheel your bike.
Goodramgate is a diagonal street - not part of the original Roman grid pattern. It was probably established around AD600, and the suffix '-gate' is from the Viking period.
The houses at Our Lady Row, on your right, are some of York's oldest, built around 1316. The construction is 'jettied', with the upper floor projecting out over the lower floor.
Go back up Goodramgate, and turn right through Bedern Passage.
Bedern Chapel and Bedern Hall are what remains of Bedern College, established in 1252.
The Vicars Choral lived there, and sang at the Cathedral. Much of their income came from bequests to sing masses for the affluent dead - chantry money.
Continue via Bartle Garth and St Andrewgate to Kings Square.
King's Square is at the south eastern entrance to the Roman fort.
There may have been a palace for the Anglo-Saxon Kings of Northumbria here, and in the 900s a Viking royal palace.
Holy Trinity church occupied part of this space, but was demolished in 1937. Look out for the nineteen gravestones which were saved and used in the paving of King's Square.
Head back along St Andrewgate then turn right on Spen Lane and right on St Saviourgate, passing Jorvik DIG.
At the end of St Saviourgate is Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate.
Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate is the shortest street in York, and means either 'what a street!' or 'neither one thing nor the other'.
Join Pavement, so called because it was one of the first streets in York to be paved.
Pass the bottom end of Shambles.
Shambles is a contraction of Great Flesh Shambles, because many of York's butchers had premises here with shops at the front and slaughterhouses at the back. The oldest buildings on the street date from the 1300s.
The street is narrow by design, so that meat would be kept out of the sunlight.
Shambles could be the inspiration for Harry Potter's Diagon Alley. It could be but it isn't, but still wizard shops are part of the street's retail offer.
Continue along Pavement to the junction with Parliament Street (so-called because it needed an Act of Parliament to build it).
In front of you is All Saints Pavement. It was the Guild church of York, and Lord Mayors were buried here. In the Middle Ages a light was kept burning at night in the lantern tower on top, to guide travellers to the city.
Continue straight on on Coppergate, then walk down to your left, on Coppergate Walk. The Jorvik Centre is on your right.
York's Viking era began on All Saints Day 866, with the arrival of the Great Heathen Army led by Ivar the Boneless.
Vikings settled here, and Coppergate was one of the most densely-populated areas of the city. York Archaeological Trust carried out excavations from 1976-81, then recreated Viking Jorvik on site, with scenes of people living here around AD975.
Continue through St Mary's Square and along Castle Walk to Clifford's Tower.
William the Conqueror defeated Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. When William arrived in York in 1068, he built a castle here. It's a motte and bailey affair: the motte is the mound with a keep on top, and a bailey is a walled area at a lower level.
Following a local revolt early in 1069, William built a second castle on the other side of the river, at Baile Hill.
William spent Christmas 1069 in York, and while here he devastated the Yorkshire countryside in an episode known as the Harrying of the North.
The Eye of York is the oval lawn near Clifford's Tower, surrounded by buildings on three sides. They are the Female Prison, the Debtors' Prison, and the Crown Court.
Dick Turpin was kept in the Debtor's Prison in the 1730s.
The two prisons now form the Castle Museum, founded in 1938.
Cross Tower Street, and take the bike path through Tower Gardens/St George's Field to New Walk.
New Walk was created in the 1730s.
Follow it to the confluence of the Ouse and the Foss and go over the Blue Bridge. Behind the bridge, the Foss Barrier looms; it prevents backwash from the Ouse causing flooding further up the Foss when water levels are high.
Cross the Ouse on the Millennium Bridge.
The Millennium Bridge cost £4.2 million and opened on 10th April 2001. Its raked bowstring is intended to resemble the top of a bicycle wheel.
Continue along the other side of the Ouse, then turn right up Croft Mews to the old Terry's factory.
The business that became Terry's began as a shop near Bootham Bar selling cough lozenges and glacé fruit. When it moved to St Helen's Square, it was called Bayldon & Berry.
Joseph Terry married into the Berry family and ran the business. His son Joseph took it on, and moved it to Clementhorpe. In 1926, Terry's moved into the art deco Chocolate Works.
From 1926 to 1954, Terry's made the Chocolate Apple, which pre-dated the more famous Chocolate Orange.
Kraft Foods bought the business in 2005 and moved production to Europe.
Cross Bishopthorpe Road and head for York Racecourse.
Racing move here from Clifton Ings in 1731, and the first grandstand was built in 1754 by John Carr.
The most important racing event of the year is the Ebor Festival in August. Stage 2 of the 2014 Tour de France started here.
Continue on the mapped route to Rowntree Park.
Rowntree Park was funded by Joseph Rowntree as a memorial to Cocoa Works staff who died in World War I. It opened in 1921.
This could be a good place for rest and refreshment.
Head on to Bishophill.
Roman York had a population of about 5,000 soldiers and 5,000 merchants and traders. Many of the civilians lived in Bishophill.
Baile Hill is where the sister castle to Clifford's Tower was sited. A chain could be thrown between the two castles, to stop boats coming up the river.
Holy Trinity Priory, off Priory Street but better visible from Micklegate, was established in Bishophill by French Benedictine monks after the Norman Conquest (1098). Each year York's famous Medieval Mystery Plays began at Holy Trinity's gateway.
The Priory ended during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s, but the church survived as a parish church.
At the end of Priory Street, turn left on Micklegate to see Micklegate Bar.
Micklegate Bar stands very close to the line of the Roman road from Tadcaster to York. The Roman road headed in a straight line for the Ouse, to a bridge at today's Guildhall.
The Vikings determined the line of modern Micklegate (Great Street), which bends right to Ouse Bridge.
There were walls around parts of York from Roman times onwards, but the walls we see today were largely built from the 1100s to the 1300s. They were renovated, and the walkways were widened, in the Victorian era.
Micklegate Bar is the traditional entrance to the city for monarchs, a tradition that goes back to 1389.
Head down Micklegate and turn left on North Street.
On your right, between North Street and the Ouse, are North Street Gardens.
In the gardens is a Victorian water pump placed there as a memorial to Dr John Snow, who traced the source of a cholera outbreak in London.
On the other side of the river is the Guildhall.
The Guildhall was built between 1449 and 1459 as a meeting place for the city's guilds. That is the central building. Two further parts of the building were added either side in the 1800s - the Atkinson Room (right of the picture) and the Municipal Offices (left of the picture).
Much of the Guildhall was destroyed in a Baedecker raid in 1942. After the war it was rebuilt, and was reopened by the Queen Mother in 1960.
Continue on Wellington Row, under Lendal Bridge.
Lendal Bridge connects the station to the city centre. This is an opportunity to mention York's railway history.
York got its first railway link in 1839 when the York & North Midland Railway (YNMR) built a line to South Milford. YNMR was crucial to the development of the railways in York.
YNMR chairman George Hudson persuaded George Stephenson to build his Newcastle-London line via York, and the first York to London train ran in 1840.
When the North Eastern Railway was formed by the merger of several railway companies, York became its hub and HQ.
The other side of Lendal Bridge, continue on West Esplanade, then cross the river on Scarborough Bridge. Head for Marygate and the St Mary's Lodge entrance to the Museum Gardens.
Wheel your bike back into the Museum Gardens, where you see the ruins of St Mary's Abbey.
St Mary's Abbey was founded in 1088, soon after the Norman Conquest, and it became one of the most powerful Benedictine monasteries in England.
The monks had to leave in 1539, at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
The ruins of the abbey provided an atmospheric backdrop to a revival of York's Mystery Plays from 1951 to 1988.
The Museum Gardens are botanic gardens designed by Sir John Murray Naysmith in the 1830s, and the attractions in and around the gardens include:
There is a full version of this York city tour by bike in Bike Rides In and Around York.
Bike Rides In and Around York starts a city tour of York, then there are wonderful family, road, and mountain bike rides.
It's intended to inspire you discover York and the surrounding countryside on two wheels.
Each ride comes with a map and GPS files that you can upload to a device.
'This book is simply a treasure trove not only of great rides but also as a travel guide to the area.' Reader review, July 2021.
Find out more about Bike Rides In and Around York, and buy a copy.
Bike Rides in Harrogate and Nidderdale is a book of family, mountain and road bike rides.
"This guide is a wonderful companion whether you ride alone, with family or friends. Don't set out without it."
Read more about Bike Rides in Harrogate and Nidderdale.