Welcome To The Summer… Of No Cycling?

By Andrew on July 19, 2026 • ( Leave a comment )

Well, summer started a few weeks ago but I’m a teacher so in my world, ‘summer’ begins when then final school bell of the academix year tolls. “Alexa? Cancel all alarms!” can be heard across the land as educational professionals take leave of their classrooms and, if they are lucky, their senses too for a carefree, student-free six weeks of… Err?

It’s unusual for me to have no travel plans for the summer holidays, but I haven’t. Last year was cycling La Vélo Francette in northern France, two years ago was Shetland and Orkney (although the summer weather memo never reached those northern outposts of the UK), 2023 was hiking in the Alps – the Tour du Mont Blanc (I never did make the film that the teaser behind that link refers to…) – and a couple of days in Paris and 2022 saw me take two months to travel my ‘Grand Tour‘ of the continent from the Hook of Holland to the Hook of Holland. It was my most recent ‘big’ tour on two wheels. Read all about it in the book, Le Grand Tour… on a Bike Called Wanda. In years prior to that it was The Hebridean Way, the ‘Great British Cycle Tour’, cycling through northern Spain into Portugal, climbing the national ‘Three Peaks’ of the UK, climbing the Yorkshire ‘Three Peaks’, the Haute Route from Chamonix to Zermatt (again on two legs rather than two wheels) and in 2015 my epic ‘Spain to Norway’ trip. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if the last time I had no travel plans for the summer holidays was way back in 2008. I subsequently wrote about that in my first book. It was the first paragraph of the prologue:

There’ s a t-shirt you can buy that states that there are three reasons to become a teacher; Christmas, Easter and summer and although I don’t subscribe to the cynical sentiment, there is a pertinent message for all teachers in the smugness; we are very lucky to have such a long period away from our workplaces every year so we shouldn’t waste it. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what I was doing in the summer of 2008. No plans, no adventures. In fact, nothing apart from a six-week period of sloathing from one unimportant activity to the next. The far off Beijing Olympics were successfully filling the gaps in between.

That summer of idleness was instrumental in kick starting my subsequent – and ongoing – foray into cycle travel.

So, it’s 18 years since I last had no travel plans for the school summer holidays. In 2026, however, I do have a good excuse. And it certainly won’t be an idle summer. As I mentioned a few posts ago, the audiobook rights for my four books have been purchased by a publishing company in London. The original suggestion was that the recordings would take place in London, but as I will be reading the books myself, it has been arranged for me to record the audio here in Yorkshire, in a small studio in a place called Apperley Bridge, a village squeezed between the urban sprawls of Bradford and Leeds. Over 12 days – spread across five weeks so as not to exhaust my ability to speak – I’ll be heading over the hill to Bradford and beyond. 30 minutes in the car but it would be good to use the train combined with a cycle into Halifax (my local station) and a cycle up the hill from Bradford city centre at the other end of the commute. Interestingly, Cycle.Travel (yes, the navigation site featured in episode 100 of The Cycling Europe Podcast) suggests a route through the suburbs to the exact location of the studio, but change the destination by just a few hundred metres to Apperley Bridge itself and I am directed along the rather conveniently located Cycle Route 66 which follows the route of the Leeds-Liverpool canal. On a warm summer evening, that may be my preferred route back to the station.

So a summer of no cycling? Not quite true. And it’s worth noting that the first and final days of recording are scheduled to be July 31st and August 24th respectively. That still leaves almost two weeks at the start of the holidays – this coming week and the one after that – and one week at the end of the holidays to head somewhere more exotic on the bike. Perhaps I should revisit my abandoned micro-adventure to explore the northern Dales. I was planning to do this earlier in the year and had even booked three nights in a pod at YHA Grinton Lodge but enthusiasm was lacking and the weather forecase not very promising so I cancelled the booking. I’m tempted to rebook. It now being the summer, I can cope with camping in the tent there this time.

Off the bike, I’m in training, again, for the York 10k which takes plave on August 2nd. This was my first 10k back in 2023. I have a finisher’s t-shirt for my efforts but my time was a rather sluggish pace of 7:05 mins/km (1hr:13mins:06secs). I hadn’t really prepared for it. I’ll correct that. I hadn’t prepared for it! I struggled and walked parts of the route. But it was nice to tick off doing an ‘official’ 10k. I entered the following year but withdrew due to… lack of preparation. However, autumn 2024 saw me grasp the running nettle and stick to the Couch to 5K programme. I entered the race again in 2025 and slashed my time to 52:52, a pace of 5:16. Last year I also completed the Leeds 10k (prior to the York10k) – 53:39 – and the Leeds Abbey Dash 10k (after York) – 52:13. In this year’s Leeds 10k in June I completed the course in 51:03, a pace of 5:06. I’m currently running Huddersfield ParkRun at around 25 minutes – last week 24:53, this week 25:15. The thought (dream?) of running a sub-50-minute 10k is not unrealistic (well, Strava thinks I can). Perhaps the first two weeks of the holiday might be better spent at home in training rather than living it up at YHA Grinton Lodge in, err… my tent.

Then again, by the end of the summer, I’ll have other things on my mind. Yes, the return to school in September (alas) but – and this does mean getting back on the bike – I’ll be heading for Ilkley on September 20th. Why? Well, I did tease this on Facebook a few days ago; I’ve entered the Ilkley Triathlon. Inspired to do so by two colleagues at work. One is only a few months older than me and he is no jobbing triathlete; he’s only gone and achieved the qualifying time to represent his (our!) age group at the European Triathlon! The other colleague is a couple of years older than me. She’s just retired and is also planning to complete the Ilkley Triathlon. Having toyed with the idea of entering a triathlon over the last couple of years (I can already successfully swim, cycle and run), when entries opened I signed up. The Ilkley Triathlon is known to be a good one for first-timers:

The Ilkley Triathlon is a sprint-distance event with a 500m indoor swim, followed by a 14.5km bike (3x laps of a 4.8km circuit) and a 4.8km run (1x lap of the same circuit). Whilst the event is taking place at the Ilkley Pool & Lido, the swim takes place in the indoor pool with extra-wide lanes, and not in the outdoor lido.

Swim 500m indoor

Bike 14.5km (3x laps)

Run 4.8km (1x lap)

The bike and run follow the same course (see map above and video below) – a 4.8 km circuit along Denton Road, Carter Lane, Curly Hill and Middleton Road. The first mile is flat, the second uphill, and the third mile downhill. The course is suitable for all abilities, but can be challenging if you want to make it so.

IlkleyTriathlon.co.uk

The other thing on my mind aside from audiobooks, the York 10k, YHA Grinton Lodge (tbc) and the Ilkley Triathlon is The Cycling Europe Podcast. It has a new website by the way. Well, it doesn’t. It just has a new URL – TheCyclingEuropePodcast.com – which will direct you to where you are now, CyclingEurope.org. Episodes 101, 102 and 103 have all been recorded. I have an idea for episode 104 and if I do get to Grinton Lodge, that will be episode 105. I also have a wonderful monologue from a chap called Robert Dudley who sent me this the other day:

Yes, it is very good for me Robert! His recording is wonderfully natural. What you’ve just heard is just his message to me (a preamble to what will be published on the podcast – probably episode 101).

I just need to get the next few episodes edited and pieced together. My plan is to do that before the end of July and get everything published by the end of August. There, I’ve said it so I’ll now have to do it.

Perhaps I should go back and change the title: Welcome to the summer… of lots of cycling! (Just not so long-distance…)

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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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