My friend and I did a cycle trip from Lake Windermere to Bath a couple of years ago. It was just short of 500 miles, and we did it in 10 days. We carried all our gear with us and we camped out most nights. It got emotional at times.
We had a full day exploring Lake Windermere before we set off. If anyone isn’t sure where it is, it’s up in the Lake District, which is the far Northwest of England. It’s a national park of absolute beauty and of course lakes. We spent our time just nonchalantly cycling around the lake, taking it easy as we knew we were gonna be putting some mileage in the next couple of weeks.
The next day we set off, there was a bit of a chill in the morning air and the charcoal grey clouds were taunting us. It was July, but that doesn’t matter in England. We headed southeast through the Yorkshire Dales.
The Dales are a wondrous national park of rolling green hills and beautiful little Yorkshire villages everywhere. If you have never been, I definitely recommend the area. Cycling though them with 15kg of stuff strapped to your bike isn’t recommended, however. Some of the beautiful, rolling hills rolled up a bit to steeply at times, and the downs seemed to go too quickly.
We just headed on and hoped our innate map was taking us in a southeastern direction. When we got to West Burton, we decided we’d had enough so we just chilled in the village and prepared for the next day.
The next day we kept ploughing through the Dales, taking in the breathtaking scenery. What’s more, the sun was out and the short ride to Leeds was a very pleasant ride. We stopped at Skipton and Ilkley on the way, and they are two very nice towns.
We spent the night in Leeds, which is a great city. I wrote an article on Leeds the other day so if anyone would like to read that, please do. Again the next morning was a blistering hot day. Well, it was blue skies and about 25c which is a heatwave for Yorkshire. And so we headed due south in search of our target, through the Peak District and over to Glossop.
Glossop was a little out of our way, but we had somewhere to stay through warmshowers.org which is an airbnb type website for cyclists. Fellow cyclists are willing to put other long distance cyclists up. Luckily, we had a host who had just fallen out of the kindness tree.
Not only did he put us up in his beautiful country home, he made us dinner, and got the wine out, which was on free flow. We chatted away all evening, swapping cycling tales and getting drunker.
The next day was hard. At first anyway. Drinking a bottle of red wine before cycling 50 miles though the Peak District isn’t the best of moves. Especially when it’s kind of guaranteed that its going to rain. The Peak District is a beautiful and hilly part of the world, but when you’re trying to shake a headache off and the heavens open up, it doesn’t make for the most pleasant of experiences.
We made it to the southern end of the Peak District and stopped in a beautiful little village called Bakewell. And from there on in it was pretty flat for a few days. We cycled away though the B-roads of Shakespeare Country, stopping at the odd village, and of course Shakespeare’s birthplace.
Stratford Upon Avon isn’t quite the remote village it was back in the days of Shakespeare and co. but it’s still a quaint and beautiful little town. Shakespeare’s house that he lived in is still there and some sized house it is. You can do a tour around it and experience how the Bard lived.
The next morning we headed off and kept going through some spectacular scenic routes through the midlands and then down into the Cotswolds. We spent a couple of days cycling and camping through the amazing Cotswolds. Some of the nicest villages and greenest scenery you will see in the beautiful and pleasant land that is England is to be found in the area.
A couple more nights and we were finally made it to our target. Bath is another quintessentially English town. With its Roman Baths dominating the centre, it’s a special place, but there’s more to it than the famous Baths. Just wondering around the town and soaking it up and admiring the architecture like the famous Royal Crescent, and popping in the second hand shops serve a special atmosphere that only these small towns and villages can offer.
From the Lakes in the northwest, through some of the nicest green pastures in Yorkshire, through Shakespeare country and on through the amazing villages of the Cotswolds and finally onto Bath, it was a tough trip, but it was quintessentially English all the way, and it’s a trip I’d recommend anyone do.
