Blogs from North Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom, Europe

Today we drove from Edinburgh down to York with a couple of detours along the way. It was the first time the morning was actually cold. The car said it was about 9 degrees (which really is nothing), but it was driving through the fog in the Scottish Highlands that kept the concentration going. (unfortunately my side kick of a photographer didn't get the real fog we drove through!) After a 2 hour drive, we made it to Hadrian's Wall in Corbridge, England. Hadrian's Wall was built by the Romans to stop the northern frontier invading their E... read more

We had some trepidation about leaving York to cross the North York Moors to get to the North Sea coast. For one thing we knew that we would be leaving the relaively flat terrain starting about 20 miles to the north. There was the steep climb over the Howardian Hills before Pickering and then the long climb upto the moors and the ravines that cut through it. For another, it had become windy and rainy while we were in York, and more of the same was promised for the next few days. On the positive side we were well rested and well fed and, thanks to Karen and Kathy's mapping and good advice from the folks at York's Cycle Heaven, we had a good traffic-free route to Pickering and from there a back road route on ... read more

North from Oxford now. Keeping east of the industrial cities and the hills. Keeping west of the coast Keeping off of the main roads and, as much as possible, off of dirt tracks. The challenge is to find a straight, narrow, paved, well-signed, light-trafficked, northward-heading one. The Sustrans routes work well at times. Otherwise we seek the ideal path on an Ordinance Survey map and hope to not get lost. Most of the time we don't More hills at first and wind, then rain. Downpour in Market Harborough, so we duck into the covered public market for a lunch of jacket potatoes with beans and cheese. Ordinary cheese to them, good strong white cheddar to us. Asking people in town for directions to the bike route. "Where are you headed?" "John O'Groats; we've come from Land's ... read more

Welcome to the City of York ! Unlike Bath, I did not have much expectations from York and I must admit that my knowledge of the town was quite limited to the House of York so I visited this city for the first time on a beautiful Spring day with a totally opened mind and was I in for a pleasant surprize indeed ! I left my car in the carpark outside the city walls and just could not resist climbing up the steep and narrow staircase leading to the walls and walk around the town as the first visitors would have done and seeing these perfectly preserved walls filled with thousands of daffodils in bloom on each side were a truly unforgettable sight ! I then ventured into the town through a very pleasant street ... read more

After a good night at The Pheasant Inn, we pointed Georgie in the direction of Yorkshire. She and Ian were not impressed as we drove through the Northumberland National Park, with windy roads and mist giving little or no views we finally made it onto the main A roads. Woolly says – I couldn’t see a thing, not even a sheep to count! One hundred and fifteen miles on we took a sharp left and Georgie begrudgingly chugged up the steep road to Whitby Abbey, dominating the town and the cliffs around it was pretty impressive and it was easy to see why Bram Stoker was inspired to write Dracula when looking at the High Gothic walls of the abbey. Wrapping up warm we went to find the entrance, walking round the outside wall of the ... read more

We arrived in Heathrow around 7am and went to Kings Cross train station via the Picadilly line. Our train didn't leave until 10:30am so we had plenty of time waiting to leave for York. Kings Cross is where in the Harry Potter book they leave from a non-existant platform, they have a luggage cart for a photo-op that looks like it's disappearing into the wall. We stayed in the Hazelwood B&B, just outside the Gilygate near York Minister. The city inside the old walls is easily walkable which is what we did for the next two days. We joined a "haunted" walking tour at night just as an excuse to stay awake to fix our jetlag. We started day 2 walking the south end of the wall as we had walked the north (old Roman area) ... read more