April: The Start Of The Cycle Touring Year (For Me…)

By Andrew on April 8, 2025 • ( 1 Comment )

February and March have been a quiet couple of months here on CyclingEurope.org. Indeed in March there was just the one update to the website and even then it was all about, err… hiring cars at Tirana airport in Albania. (I have to pay the website fees somehow…) But it’s now April and things are beginning to warm up, metaphorically and literally. Let’s deal with the second of those two to begin with. Here is the weather forecast for Appletreewick in the Yorkshire Dales for the coming week:

I don’t live in Appletreewick. I’m a bit further south in West Yorkshire but with two weeks off work (school) and weather like this, I’m hoping it will be my home for Thursday and Friday night at a campsite close to the centre of the village. Train from home to Bradford (to avoid the hill between it and Halifax), cycle north beside the Leeds and Liverpool Canal to Skipton and then pick up the Yorkshire Dales Cycleway to Appletreewick. That’s Thursday. Friday? Who knows? Continue to follow the Dales Cycleway? Irrespective, after a second night in Appletreewick it will be an early morning cycle back to Skipton for the local ParkRun (I started doing this more regularly in 2024 and only last week recorded another PB – 26 minutes, 49 seconds) before a return journing south to Bradford and home. I have the option of taking the train from Skipton but if the weather is as good as is promised, why would I? So that’s the plan.

Wanda, my Koga WorldTraveller is being prepped for the journey. Here she is looking resplendant after a clean earlier in the week:

Only two nights so it will be a two-pannier affair (perhaps just one pannier?), the tent and sleeping kit making up the bulk of what I need to take with me. On the subject of the tent, here’s a picture of my MSR Hubba Hubba two-person tent on Orkney last August:

It is a fantastic tent; good size, strong (it needed to be on Shetland and Orkney!) and phenominally light. I would certainly recommend it. I bought it back in 2021 prior to setting off on my ‘Grand Tour’ on 2022 and it served me very well during the hot summer around France and into the Alps. However, the outer skin has become horribly stretched on the sides and I have feared the cost of replacing just the outer. To buy a new tent now would cost around £500. Ouch! I have looked into the cost of just the outer before and was quoted over £200. However, last week I emailed Wildbounds, the company in Bristol where I bought the tent in 2021 enquiring about the cost of the outer and they quoted ‘just’ £100. I was very suspicious that perhaps they were quoting for the wrong tent but they assured me it was the one I had bought. (Even they were surprised how relatively cheap the replacement outer was.) It arrived yesterday and, still not quite convinced they had sold me the correct one, I erected the tent this morning in my perfectly-tent-sized living room:

It fits perfectly! Note to self: don’t over-tighten the material when erecting in the future.

So look out for a few posts later in the week. Can I squeeze a podcast out of such a short escapade? Perhaps. Keep watching and listening to this space. Talking of listening, I have news! See the next post later today.

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Le Grand Tour on a Bike Called Wanda, was published in May 2024 and recounts Andrew P. Sykes’ journey around France, into the Alps and down the Rhine in the summer of 2022. It is available as a paperback and as and eBook from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com (and other international Amazon sites). The paperback is also available from Waterstones or Foyles and the eBook from Apple iBooks.

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