2009-Aug-15 by Gregory Williams.

The route today was extremely flat. Indeed my plans show a cumulative climb of 40 metres for today, whereas it was about 1500 metres for the day I climbed into Dartmoor and that was considerably shorter. Just because it was flat doesn’t mean that I was fast though. Flat allows strong winds and I had both headwinds and crosswinds with the occasional following wind. I managed to pick up a decent pace (peaking at 22mph) in the sheltered areas, but these were rare.

There were several interesting churches along the route today. I particularly remember the tall tower of the principal church in Boston rose up above the town, as it reminded me of The Two Towers.

It’s now just a week until I complete this journey. For the last leg I shall be cycling from the Greenwich Foot Tunnel (South side) back to Canterbury. I’ve arranged for bike ride organised by Spokes East Kent Cycle Campaign (of which I’m on the committee) to coincide with this. The Spokes ride will start from London Bridge station at 08:00 on Saturday 22nd. It’s open to everyone, so if you’d like to accompany me on the final leg then why not pop along? They’ll meet me at the Greenwich Foot Tunnel after following NCR4 from London Bridge station. For details see the Spokes website.

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2009-Aug-15 by Gregory Williams.

I had a friend come along and cycle most of the leg with me today. We started out on a quiet road and soon the route used a few rough bridleways before weaving to the road again. The route passes through many small villages going up and downhill in the process, but after Walesby it proceeds downhill to the flat. In one of the small villages we discovered a section of NCR12, so I cycled a short section of this to make sue it’s marked on the map.

At Market Rasen we stopped off for a pub lunch, then weaved our way through a few more villages to Lincoln, where my friend departed by train. I then continued eastward, still following National Cycle Route 1, using a former railway route between the river Witham and an irrigation ditch. With the exception of a short road and short bridleway section this continued all of the way to Woodhall Spa. Along this route are a number of artworks of plants and animals together with lots of interpretation boards about the fen landscape and its wildlife.

Unfortunately I continue to be without Internet access, so the blog postings are piling up, as will no doubt my emails. I’ve ran out of downloaded mapping data with which to edit, so can’t enter any more of that as well. Hopefully I’ll get Internet access soon; this is frustrating.

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2009-Aug-15 by Gregory Williams.

Today’s route quickly started off heading through Selby before heading out beside the river Ouse to the flat countryside. The Ouse eventually joins the Humber and several miles downstream I crossed via the Humber Bridge into Lincolnshire, with my accomodation being a few miles further on.

Fairly early on during my ride today I met another cyclist with a GPS heading in the opposite direction. It turns out that he’s cycling from Brighton to Thurso and has performed much of his planning using Memory-Map, like me. We discussed his route northward and I told him about the OpenStreetMap project, which he hadn’t heard about, and gave him a card about my ride. He said he’ll take a look once he gets back home again.

Unfortunately the Internet access at today’s accomodation isn’t quite working. It connects to the WiFi perfectly fine, it also connects to the ISP, but it’s evident that I can only reach a few hops into the ISP’s network before everything vanishes — I can’t reach the wider Internet. It’s particularly annoying because I’ve got a rest day here and I’m hoping to catch up on the backlog of mapping data entry, emails, etc.

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2009-Aug-15 by Gregory Williams.

I’ve been very lucky to have great weather for at least part of my time in each of the national parks that I’ve passed through. This continued to be the case for my departure from the North York Moors National Park.

My journey started off via a traffic-free track then took in some quiet roads. At one point I stopped to take some pictures and spotted a frog on the road.

During my journey I found three portions of the recently renumbered NCR656, which I found a little confusing. They all lead off to the east from the route I was following, so this confused me — I thought that a point of the renumbering was to remove the ambiguity of braids with the same number, but this suggests that NCR656 is itself a braided route. I also discovered a portion of NCR657. I’ll get these entered into the OpenStreetMap data once I manage to catch up with my data entry and get Internet access again.

The cycle route between York and Riccall follows a former railway. It’s one of the earliest such cycle routes in the country. It has a scale model of the solar system along its length, developed by the University of York, which gives an appreciation of the completely different distances between the inner and outer planets.

At my accomodation I was unexpectedly given a 1955 map of the York area, after mentioning my interest in maps. Another surprise was being invited to a BBQ being held that evening.

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2009-Aug-15 by Gregory Williams.

As you’ll have gathered from the number of times I’ve mentioned it, I’ve got GPS on my bike. It can tell me my current location in a number of co-ordinate systems and also display a map (I’ve got freely-downloadable OpenStreetMap loaded onto it). My GPS attempts to display my current altitude, and to help it achieve that it has a built-in barometer (the GPS signal alone isn’t that good for vertical precision). Usually it’s within a few metres accuracy, which is fine for me judging roughly how far through a climb I am. However today I found that it was either temporarily highly inaccurate, that we have an inland area in the British Isles that’s substantially below sea level, or that I’d unexpectedly grown some gills. I suspect the former. Apparently I managed to dive to 61 metres below sea level.

Today’s route took me along pretty lengthy sections of former railway and into Stockton-on-Tees. There I followed a large number of cycle paths to the Tees Barage, and then following the Tees to the Transporter Bridge. At this point I started to follow National Cycle Route 65 southward. This is the first of two major diversions from NCR1 that I’ll be taking. I followed NCR65 for the rest of the day, leaving the urban area through Middlebrough, then through the countryside and eventually climbed into the North York Moors National Park.

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2009-Aug-15 by Gregory Williams.

The ride today was fairly flat for most of it, but ended with a climb via a path on the route of a former railway. After some initial countryside the route started to pass through urban areas, most notably around the Tyne. I found that the signing of NCR1 seemed to disappear somewhere around Whitley Bay or Tynemouth, so instead I just followed the coast road until I was eventually able to pick up some signs again. It was probably just one sign missing, but that’s all that’s needed to lose the route.

The cycle routes get complex near to the Tyne. There are several of them. There’s NCR1 ultimately heading north / south, NCR72 the Hadrian’s Cycleway, and NCR10 the Reivers Cycle Route (currently being renumbered from Regional Cycle Route 10). There’s also NCR14 on the south side of the Tyne. Something signed as NCR7 (which, I admit, I was surprised to see here — perhaps it’s mis-signed?) and Regional Cycle Route 20 make an appearance as well. Strictly following NCR1 I could have used a ferry to cross the Tyne, but instead I used a portion of NCR72 and NCR14 to cross via the Tyne foot / cycle tunnel (Actually it’s two parallel tunnels, one for pedestrians and the other for cyclists.). Unlike the Greenwich Foot Tunnel which I’ll be using in a few days’ time it seems that cycling is allowed in the Tyne cycle tunnel.

On my way out of the Tyne urban area I met a PCSO out on a beat using a bicycle. We chatted for a bit about my ride and I gave him a card about the trip.

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2009-Aug-15 by Gregory Williams.

I’m currently following the portion of National Cycle Route 1 that’s named Coast and Castles. It certainly lives up to its name. Several portions of the cycle route follow the Northumbria Coast Path and there are plenty of castles along the way. 11 miles into my journey there was the option of following a spur of NCR1 out to Holy Island. This goes across a causeway that’s only accessable a low tide, and luckily that was the case when I arrived. Riding across to the island was a strange experience with the water so close. On Holy Island I was presented with the first castle: Lindisfarne Castle.

Back on the mainland the next castle was the magnificant Bamburgh Castle. The route then passes nearby to Dunstanburgh Castle. Then, near to the village of Craster was the Craster Tower, spanning the road. Near to Howick the site of a stone-age hut was found. Today there’s a rebuilt hut standing there beside a traffic-free braid of the cycle route. Further still the cycle route passes straight by Warkworth Castle.

Sustrans, the charity behind the National Cycle Network, have been publicising the Coast & Castles route pretty strongly lately. That’s obviously paying off because I’ve seen lots of cyclists on this section of the route, many of them with the Coast & Castles Sustrans map. Well done Sustrans.

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