A distinct shift in tourism preferences has occurred across the island, with visitors increasingly prioritising active engagement with the outdoors over passive sightseeing. Travellers now frequently choose to explore the countryside on foot or by bicycle, seeking a closer connection to the terrain and local culture. This trend has driven a corresponding evolution in infrastructure, services, and regional planning to support self-propelled exploration.
In this episode of The Cycling Europe Podcast, journalist Steve Silk talks about the journey behind his new book, Go West, a cycling odyssey along the A40 from London to the west coast of Wales. We also hear from Australian cyclist Gayle Moore who recounts the story of her two coast-to-coast rides across Ireland and then northern England.
Whilst Belfast may not be renowned for its cyclists, donโtdoubt that the Northern-Irish capital has its fair share of quaint and charming cycle trails paired with incredible views. In recent years, the city has witnessed an increase in its popularity for cycling, thanks to improvements made tocycling routes. Now, travellers are eager to visit the area, with green spaces covering the city and the iconic Lagan River passing over scenic hotspots. Cyclists are spoilt here in Belfast, with a plethora of different trails scattered over the city. This is why we have decided to make a list of ourfavourite routes located here in Belfast.
And so is the Highway Code. It’s been interesting to see how the gammons, ‘kippers and Nigels (apologies if you are a Nigel who doesn’t adhere to the thoughts of the ridiculous Nigel Farage) of Britain have been reacting this week to the news that the updated Highway Code will (shock horror!) introduce a pyramid of hierarchy that sees those who are more likely (and able) to inflict death and destruction on the roads being assumed to have more responsibility that those who pose little danger to others.
This weekend sees the start of the 2021 Cycle Touring Festival. It’s virtual once again so you can listen to the speakers and watch the films from the comfort of your own living room. You do need to register however for each of the sessions (delivered via Zoom) and you can full details on how to do that by visiting the Cycle Touring Festival website. My contribution this year will be mainly in the form of a short talk in the first session at 8pm on Friday 12th February. The theme is ‘touring in a time of COVID’ and I’ll be discussing the motivation behind setting off last summer to cycle to the four capital cities of the UK as well as the journey itself. Below are a few screenshots to whet your appetite. Look forward to seeing some of you there.
In these somewhat strange times, heading out to the cinema to watch a film, let alone attending a film premiรจre, might be off the agenda for most people. Yet today I can offer you the chance to do just that from the comfort of your own home. You are formally invited to the film premiere of The Great British Cycle Tour: The Film. The film premiรจres on YouTube on Sunday 27th December at 6pm UK time (that’s GMT)…
Having just upgraded my computer, I’m now in a position to start editing the film of last summer’s Great British Cycle Tour. Here’s a few minutes from the start of the movie… Hopefully the complete film with be readyy by the end of the month.
My project for December is to edit the film of this summer’s Great British Cycle Tour. I’ve just started piecing things together and have started to consider options when it comes to the ‘look’ of the film. I’m tempted to go down the black and white route. What do you think? Here’s the ‘teaser’ that I’ve just uploaded to the Cycling Europe YouTube Channel.
A photographic retrospective looking back over 11 years of cycling Europe…
An upcoming episode of The Cycling Europe Podcast will tell the full story of my cycling trip around the four capitals of the United Kingdom during the Coronavirus summer of 2020. Here’s a short teaser to whet your appetite. It focuses upon the background to the journey and cycling day one from my home in West Yorkshire to Bolton Abbey at the southern edge of the Yorkshire Dales.
If you are a lover of silent films, this will be a treat for you; the final instalment of The GReat British Cycle Tour 2020 videos. (It has no sound…) It’s longer than the previous ones covering ten days from Liverpool along the coast of north Wales to Anglesey and then across the principality via the Lon Las Cymru before a final sprint for the 4th and final capital, London…
So, as I head home to take stock, in summary… Itโs been 18 days of cycling (so far) ranging from a mere 7 km from the port in Belfast to the hotel in the centre to about 180 km for that rain-drenched cycle from Edinburgh to Prestwick on […]
To be continued? Who knows? If youโd like to catch up, here are the previous instalments:
If you follow the @CyclingEurope Twitter account, you may have seen the tweet I sent this morning from Portstewart, just a few kilometres along the coast from Portrush where I had stayed overnight in a B&B. I made the following comment: โWelcome to Portstewart. The end of the […]
There were points today when I was ready to jump on a train and head home (albeit on a train to Belfast, a ferry and either more trains or a long ride over several days… the points on this trip when abandonment would have been a simple affair […]
I crawled into my sleeping bag about 15 minutes ago in order to retain some heat. About 30 minutes prior to that, after a rather soggy end to the day, I erected the tent in the rain and quickly dived inside. It is continuing to rain and I […]
Slightly renamed… …and if youโd like to catch up, here are the previous instalments:
Welcome to… Apparently it is owned by a property developer, which isnโt that surprising. I have spent the day wandering the city centre; from 11am on an organised โfreeโ walking tour with a couple from Hamburg, Germany although she was originally from Belfast. They were good company, as […]
Was it really a โcycling dayโ? Not sure but what the heck; it did involve 7km… Craig (see cycling day 13) drove me and the bike the short distance to Cairnryan to catch the ferry to Belfast at 9:30. It was, of course(!) , raining but by the […]
One for the maps geeks. (Of which I am one…) You may wish to turn away if you have a dodgy internet connection as clicking on the links below is likely to test your patience in terms of download time, but I will persist. It is often a […]
Have you noticed that there will be a British general election in December? Hopefully you plan on voting. (If not, why not for goodness sake?!) As I did in 2017, I have looked at the different party manifestos for mentions of the word ‘cycling’. All the main UK-wide […]
Some names are easily forgettable. David Evans, Margaret Butcher, Terry Wilson… (I just made those up. Apologies if you are offended because you have one of those names.) My own name isn’t that exciting; Andrew Sykes. That’s why I stuck the ‘P’ in there for the purpose of […]
In these dying days of Britain being within the European Union, a retrospective photographic look at what the freedom of movement – across a peaceful continent of countries with shared values and aspirations – means in reality… That freedom is about to be curtailed for most people within […]
By Ron Ferguson When they go on holiday, most people feel the need to relax and have fun. Others want to spend their getaway in the most glamorous areas. There are also those who want to spend time in the middle of nature. What about combining all this? […]
From the perspective of this seasoned continental cyclist, the best thing about a ferry is the fact that it isn’t an aeroplane. Noย hassle packing up the bike; just a case of riding over a ramp, finding a seat and relaxing while someone else does the hard work of […]
As 2017 draws to a close I take a few moments to look back over the 150 posts from the past 12 months on CyclingEurope.org. It started in reflective mood, looking forward to the publication of Spain to Norway on a Bike Called Reggie in May. Here I […]
My cycle along the Waterford Greenway – see previous post – was inspired by my visit to the Lismore Immrama Festival of Travel Writing where I had been asked to give a talk. A more friendlier and welcoming bunch of people it would be hard to find and […]
Here’s the visual story of my day cycling along the Waterford Greenway in Ireland last week. It was certainly Waterford and it was certainly green… I had camped in Dungarvan – my destination at the southern end of the Greenway – on Thursday night… …and a friendly […]
Tried to write this on Friday evening but the WordPress app chose to freeze once I’d finished and my efforts were lost. Second time lucky, hopefully. No images for the time being as the iPhone cameras – back and front – are kaput. The usual remedies have failed […]
And these really are notes. The plan is to write up an article about my four days in Ireland (for publication?) once back in the U.K. Early start / tiresome drive across Lancashire-Cheshire / North Wales much nicer / echos of the French Riviera (sea, hills, fast corniche […]
I’m off on my travels again next week to a new (for me) European country… Ireland! More specifically I’ll be speaking at the Lismore Immrama Festival of Travel Writing – more details on the poster below – on Saturday 17th June at 12.30pm. If you happen to be […]
Things are beginning to get busy in the run-up to the publication of ‘Spain to Norway on a Bike Called Reggie‘ on Thursdayย – if you are in or near the Leeds branch of Waterstone’s at 6.30pm on Thursday, come along to the launch! – and I have spent […]
Click here to see the detailed statistics of today’s cycle. Today was a good day. The usual routine at the campsite this morning with one addition; I spent about 30 minutes attempting to remove all the accumulated gunk from the bike’s chain and mechanism that has developed since […]
While Yorkshire gears up for the Tour de France, Ireland – north and south – get ready for the arrival of the Giro d’Italia in 2014…
Korea? Ireland? No… The Parthenon Marbles! From the Autumn 2013 edition of the newsletter of the Marbles Reunited Campaign (@MarblesReunitedย / MarblesReunited.org.uk):
The ECF have just published an interview with me where I discuss this summer’s cycle from Greece to Portugal along the rough line of the Eurovelo 8. The interview can be found on the ECF’s increasingly useful Eurovelo website in a slighted edited form. The full interview is […]
Dave and Pauline’s hospitality didn’t stop in the evening; it continued in the morning where I was presented with a very nice full English breakfast. The Cockers don’t even eat breakfast while in Spain – they prefer to eat later and have a large lunch – so it […]
Monday 20th August Vienna to Bratislava: 4 hours 7 minutes, 77km “I took advantage of the hostel buffet breakfast, feasting on 3 bowls of muesli and a couple of hot chocolates. I said farewell to Julien (who was driving off to Salzburg today) and cycled off out of […]
Saturday 28th July Rest in Basel “I was hesitant to leave France. Firstly I would miss it. France had been an amazing experience and as much as I wanted to enter a new country, I felt there was also more of France that needed to be explored. The […]
A couple of Warmshowers visitors have passed this way over the last few days; first there was Bob, a novice touring cyclists in his 60s and then there was Wade, a novice touring cyclist in his 20s. I’m a novice touring cyclist somewhere in the middle! Bob is […]
Here’s Matt Krog from Cape Town. He has been my first Warmshowers guest of the weekend and today he heads off to Devizes before cycling to Wales & then Ireland. It’s his shakedown for his main trip of the summer along the Eurovelo 6 from Nantes to Budapest. […]
Today is the last day of the half-term holiday… Back to work tomorrow. But skipping over five days back at the interactive whiteboard, next weekend looks interesting. If you remember a few weeks back, I had Kate Clabby staying here in Reading after she contacted me via Warmshowers.org. […]
I received an email on Friday from someone called Kate, a travelling cyclist who was planning on making Reading a stopover en route from London to Oxford. She’d found my contact details on WarmShowers, the social network for cyclists looking for and offering accommodation. I used the site […]
Dear Mr Sykes – Iโm too full of respect to refer to you as Andrew – Iโve just completed reading your โGood Vibrations: Crossing Europe on a Bike Called Reggieโ and thoroughly enjoyed it, well done, not just for completing the journey, but also the book. You are […]
Laura Birchenoughย has just returned home from a cycle ride that took in the last part of the Eurovelo 5 – she stayed with Massimo Mazzone in Benevento – and then most of eastern / central Europe back to the UK. It seems to be the done thing to […]
Remember Rachel McCormack & partner Giovanni who are cycling from Ireland to Puglia for the Irish Cancer Society? They are following a sightly more easterly route than me but it is interesting to see that they used the Saint Gotthard pass to cross the Alps – see the […]
Rachel McCormack emails from Ireland; Hi Andrew, Just happened to come across your website and found it very interesting and quite relevant to me and partner Giovanni. We are finalising preparations for our bike challenge which will see us mountain bike from Dublin, Ireland to Santa Maria di […]
I’ve been having an email conversation with Bernie Friend, writer of the book Cycling Back to Happiness. He certainlyย got thereย if this picture was taken after he finished his trip (I am on page 79 by the way). Here are the interesting bits. He is in blue, I’m in […]
The email that people use to contact me is puglia2010@hotmail.co.uk (use it!). However, I only periodically trawl through the junk mail and junk mail filters are not perfect. Fergal in Ireland has become a victim of the over zealous filters at Microsoft but I did manage to pick […]
“The manuscript collections of the antiquary, Huntingdonshire landowner and administrator, Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631) contain many maps, charts and plans. Cotton’s collecting was driven by a blend of patriotism and a passion for antiquity. The latter accounts for the presence of one of the earliest detailed European world […]
