Last week, as the weather forecast was looking so promising, I decided to head to the nearby Yorkshire Dales for a couple of nights of early-season cycle touring. Camping in April in the UK is not for the fainthearted (although I’m sure many people reading this will have camped multiple times in the depths of winter) but the daytime temperatures of around 20 degrees made up for the chilly mornings and evenings.
I took the train from Halifax to Bradford (to avoid the hill in between the two places) then cycled north to join the Leeds-Liverpool Canal near at Shipley. That took me as far as Skipton where I branched away from the canal towards the north east and, via a rewarding pint of beer in Burnsall, the village of Appletreewick where I campred for two nights at Masons Campsite. The following day I cycled north to Grassington, Kettlewell and Buckden before turning around and returning via an almost idential route to the campsite. The second morning saw me escape the tent quickly as I needed to climb back over the hill to return to Skipton for the ParkRun. I then caught the train home.
If you are an avid listener to The Cycling Europe Podcast, you will know all that and more from listening to episode 89 which was published a few days ago. Full details here. However, as I did back in 2022 for my Grand Tour, I have combined some of the podcast audio with the video I took as I travelled to the Dales and here it is. Enjoy!
Here are the three routes that I followed:
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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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Enjoyed that, thanks – it brought the audio version (which I’d previously listened to) to life. Being able to see the lovely places en route does make me want to know more about them, though – perhaps you could say a little about a few of the places you visited? Easy for me to say, of course, and more work for you!
Thanks for the positive feedback. I suppose in this case, the focus of the podcast was not the Yorkshire Dales but the monologues. I’d love to do another full travelogue podcast soon however. Watch this space! 🙂