Day 22+: John o’Groats to Thurso

With my End to End completed I enjoyed a smug breakfast, and a morning of leisure writing smug postcards, followed by a smug lunch, in the John o’Groats House Hotel.

I amused myself watching the trickle of arrivals at the fingerpost from the comfort of my warm dry table – it was cold, drizzly and windy outside – and the varied celebrations. Some people jumped up and down and sprayed champagne. Others just looked knackered and wearily grateful.

The weather was so bad that the photographer who normally hangs around and charges you a fiver to use their signpost had stayed at home. So I nipped across to snap myself under it. (See pic from previous day’s post).



In the afternoon I rode with a tailwind to Dunnet Head, the northernmost point of the British mainland, so that I could take a picture of myself with the lighthouse (pic) and say Been there, Dunnet.

Some parents of a friend of a friend in Thurso had generously offered to put me up for the night – and, going above and beyond, gave me breakfast at 5am the next morning for my 0633 train, the beginning of the long journey back home.

Which gave me a few final local-food experiences thanks to Mr and Mrs R, my kind hosts. My dinner was Caithness beef sausages, from the butcher in town. Beefeater rating: Looking after those crown jewels.

The apple pie for pudding was local too, and the producer even knew the name of the tree that had produced them. The ice-cream was from Capaldi’s, a third-generation Italian Scottish family in Brora, and was very creamy and very nice. Cream rating: Eric Clapton solo.

I also enjoyed a bottle of Belhaven, made in Dundee: an average-tasting dark and malty beer which sent me off to sleep before I could decide in detail how it had tasted. Bell rating: Hergé’s adventures of tintinnabulation.

Breakfast – and the final local-food experience of this enjoyable culinary trip – was scrambled eggs rustled up by Mr R from local free-range hens across the road. I could see which hen had produced them. That one, there. Pun rating: Fowl play not suspected.

Miles today: 34
Miles Land’s End to John o’Groats: 1167
Miles total on trip: 1211

Day 21: Helmsdale to John o’Groats

Today was the day I finished the End to End.



Yesterday’s sunshine was too good to last, and today was another long slog into a chilly headwind with grey, blank, Tupperware skies. Riding up and down the Ord of Caithness (pic) felt like tracing a sine wave.

I stopped at a farm, run by a friendly couple from Bristol, to admire the livestock. They were llamas, wondering the same thing I was: what on earth were they doing here (pic).

At Wick I spent a couple of hours, intent on a locally-sourced lunch. In the 1860s this was the greatest herring port in Britain, possibly the world. Today I couldn’t find any local fish anywhere.

I ended up having chicken nuggets and chips, in a shabby cafe full of tarty women with bawling kids.

But I’d also come here for family research. My mum’s lot, fishing folk, came down from here to the then-boom town of Hull in the late 1800s. Perhaps their departure hastened Wick’s decline.

The Heritage Museum had illuminating displays on their way of life, and huge photographs of that era’s street scenes on the walls; I scrutinised them for faces that might resemble my grandad’s.

There were about two hundred candidates.

I plugged on, and paused to admire one farmhouse's splendid collection of coathooks (pic).

After a stopoff at Caithness Glass – presumably to get out the wind for half an hour, I’m not in the least bit interested in glass – I plodded the final few miles into the brutal northerly.

At around 6.10pm, I made my final descent to John o’Groats itself (pic).

I played Glenn Gould’s Bach 48 on my barbag stereo and saw the Orkneys appear in the distance, sleeping giants in the blue-grey distance.

Three ladies out walking cheered me home and I felt euphoric. So much that I burst into tears.



The finish line. As majestic, scenic and thrilling as I'd expected. Not very, in other words (pic).

And the signpost. I was actually here. I had made it.

I got out my miniature whisky from Tomatin and toasted myself, feeling as elated as I have ever done (pic – it was taken the morning after, as explained in tomorrow’s post). The sun even came out.

I phoned mums and dads and girlfriends and celebrated with a slap-up, treat, dinner in the John o’Groats House Hotel. With the Wick debacle still on my mind, and my stomach, I went for the Scottish Seafood Platter.

Smoked salmon, smoked mackerel, herring, ‘prawns’ Marie Rose. All ‘local’, but how local was a moot point: the ingredients had all come via Inverness from ‘Scotland’, which was a touch vague. Net rating: Highly strung, several loopholes.

There was no doubt about the provenance of the gateau, anyway. It hailed from Shrewsbury.

There was no draught Scottish beer available in the hotel, so I had a narrow escape. Instead I slurped three pints of passable Theakston’s before bedding down in the adjacent hostel for a beautiful night’s sleep.

Over a thousand miles, three weeks, a lot of local food, two punctures, countless beers, friends and relatives, awesome scenery, and it didn’t rain once. That once was in Helmsdale yesterday. (It proved to have been the wettest June for 136 years.)

Butnoseriously, this is probably the achievement I’m most proud of in my life. So far, of course. And I’ve enjoyed every minute.

Well, except for a few in St Just. And Stow-on-the-Wold. And north of Coldstream. And Perth. And Caithness. And...

Miles today: 57
Miles since Land’s End: 1167
Overall rating: Five-star experience. Not sure out of how many.

Day 20: Invergordon to Helmsdale

A frustrating morning of cooling my heels, twiddling my thumbs, tapping my toes and drumming my fingers. I’d given my bike to a monosyllabic mechanic who took all morning to fix my noisy bearings.



He certainly made a difference. I set off impatient at noon and found to my fury that the cracking noise they’d been making was louder than ever. At least I could be entertained by some road signs (pic). He could have had a similar sign on his shop: Bike repair (No Repair).

At Tain I couldn’t find a bike shop but found the next best thing, ie a distillery. I dropped in to Glenmorangie, with its unusually lofty chimney that evidently produces a whisky of especially lighter, airier taste. I tried a nip there, and it was thus, indeed: a dry-white-wine sort of whisky. Very nice too. Glenmor rating: Angie baby, you’re a special lady.

I picnicked overlooking a loch. It was the afternoon but I had morning rolls, a Scottish local thing apparently, and creamy light-orange Galloway cheese, following my regional-food concept.



Then something extraordinary happened. The sun came out, and stayed out, for the first time since Land’s End. I crossed various firths (pic) and met a 74-year-old Scouser pushing a pram from End to End.



I arrived at Helmsdale (pic) feeling good. I was so close to John o’Groats now that, surely, I’d be able to get there tomorrow, notwithstanding my bottom bracket that was doing an impression of a Cuban percussion section.

Another couple of cyclists doing LEJOG were there too, and similarly relaxed and pre-jubilant. We treat ourselves to dinner in the upscale local restaurant and swopped cyclist stories.

I enjoyed a locally-caught oak-smoked salmon: delicate, well-textured, delicious. Pun rating: Above parr.

It complimented the whisky excellently. That was a Clynelish, from the distillery in Brora a dozen miles away. Quite light, a little smoky. We toasted ourselves for our efforts so far. Pun rating: I found my girlfriend was making illicit whisky, but I love her still.

It was still bright and sunny when we strolled back to the hostel (pic), so it can’t have been a late night.

Oh. Eleven o’clock. Come to think of it, it’s late June and we’re in the far north of Scotland...

Miles today: 46
Miles since Land’s End: 1110

Day 19: Aviemore to Invergordon

A dreary morning haul through yet more freezing cold rain and gusty winds. I was getting fed up of this.



At Carrbridge I didn’t cycle over Carr Bridge (pic). I did however cycle up and over Slochd Summit, not that I could tell in the thick cloud and mist.

At Tomatin (you say Tomartin, I say Tomaytin, let’s call the whole thing off) I took a distillery tour (pic), abiding by my principle of investigating local food and drink.

Because of the recent drought (what, drought, when it’s been pouring with rain for the last 18 days?) there was only a cut-down version of the tour.

However, while our friendly guide Helen curtailed the description of malting and vats and retorts, she retained the full dram-tasting programme, so we were all happy.

On hearing of my cycle trip she also gave me a free pair of miniatures of 10yo single malt, which I thought would make a nice celebration treat at John o’Groats.

At Inverness (pic) I explored my Scottish heritage. I’m really half-English, half-Scottish: my mother’s lot, the Robertsons, are from Wick. (Her dad reckoned he was a lost heir to the Robertson’s Jam fortune, which seemed unlikely, as that’s made in Dundee.) Though our ancestry is very uncertain, and mum thinks I might be half-Irish as well. So I visited the town’s Clan Centre, but found nothing relevant; it seemed the Robertsons had no notable history of involvement in clan wars. Given what my mother’ lot were like, that was a bit surprising.

It seemed I’d be out of luck at the Balnain Museum of Highland Music, too. It was closed, with a note saying it would reopen in the summer. Fair enough, I suppose. It was only 23 June, and it was cold and wet and horrible.

However, on hearing of my cycle trip, the friendly office lady called up one of the museum guys. He very kindly came round to open up the museum, and give me a personal, free, tour.

Before I went I knew nothing about piobaireachd or canntaireachd, and couldn’t have told a strathspey from a reel.

After the fascinating session with an expert here, and having listened to many illuminating musical extracts, I still couldn’t.

Lunch was overdue, and at a pub called Number 27 I sat out more showers eating a home-cooked lunch, watching Wimbledon on the telly, and enjoying a real ale.

The pork and black pudding burgers came from local butcher Fraser’s, with home-made apple and mustard seed relish and good chunky veg from local farms. Fraser rating: Mad Frankie.

The beer was Tomintoul Stag. The village of Tomintoul was the setting for a notorious fraud that came to light in 1994. A Scottish lord had pumped money into the local economy, revitalising its whisky production. He turned out to be a senior accountant at Scotland Yard called Tony Williams who had bought his title, and the distillery, with money swindled from a police fund for undercover operations. At his trial he tried to influence the judge with some Masonic signs, to no avail: he was sent to prison.

Anyway, the beer was very nice: woody and firm but light, like rich pine. Embezzlement rating: £4m unaccounted for and an unexplained yacht in the marina.



I crossed the rather awesome Kessock Bridge (pic). Now that the wind was dropping and the rain easing up a little, I could hear birdsong again.

And, oh, a clanking from my bottom bracket.

Jeopardy! Would I be thwarted by a mechanical just a hundred miles from JoG? I spent the rest of the day fretting about it.

I hacked across the Cromarty Firth to Invergordon, where I found a b&b.

The scenery was drab and estuarial, low-slung and foggy palette of greys, greens and browns. Very reminiscent of the Humber, in fact. When my mother’s family left northwest Scotland for Hull all those years ago, I wondered what their motivation was. I hope it wasn’t for a change of scene. They’d have been disappointed. On the other hand, maybe they just couldn’t stand another summer here.

Miles today: 63
Miles since Land’s End: 1064

Day 18: Pitlochry to Aviemore

Another dull, wet day of hard going into headwinds and rain.

Just out of Pitlochry I dropped in on Blair Castle (pic), whose grounds were free to cyclists. They must be quite proud of young Tony.

For the rest of the day, the A9 was my companion.

The sort of companion you don't really want. The sort that sits between you and the aisle on the train, and talks incessantly about immigrants, or young people today, or how awful their first husband was, and how you look just like him.

And you find out they're going to where you're going, four hours away.

I pedalled for hours and the scenery didn't change. Big mountains stayed big and I never seemed to get any closer.

I passed a sign, slowly, saying welcome to the Highlands (pic).

Given the weather so far I thought yes, you're welcome to them.

Half the time I was sharing the road with fast traffic. The other half I was following the untrafficked old road (pic), often branded as a cycle path – though to get on to or off it, I often had to vault barriers.



At Kingussie I visited the Highland Folk Museum to get out of the rain. Then realised it was mostly an outdoor museum (pic).

Remarkably, at the exact moment I took the picture, the sun came out. And then went in again once it was taken. I think the shutter speed was 1/125 of a second. So it didn't quite rain all day.

There were some exhibits inside, though, and I amused myself by taking a selfie in front of a high-wheeler (pic).

Some final slogging got me to Aviemore and the youth hostel.

I celebrated breaking the thousand-mile barrier for the trip with a local half-price chip shop special: white pudding, deep-fried haggis and chips, all for £1.35. Fats rating: Waller.

Miles today: 58
Miles since Land’s End: 1001

Day 17: Dunfermline to Pitlochry

Another day of horrible weather: driving rain, headwinds, and no scenery to speak of, or see.

So bad, in fact, that I took no photos all day, as my camera wasn't rated for underwater use. I felt angry, cold, and very wet.

Breakfast was a Selkirk Bannock, a 'rich and buttery leavened tea bread', ie a bread cake the size of a car wheel with too many currants that could serve as ballast for a submarine. Selkirk rating: Alexander.

In Kinross I had a good strong coffee and pancake, or possibly crumpet, depending on whether you believed the menu or the bill. But then it was back to the very wet grindstone and more torrential rain.

In Perth I tried to dry my clothes in a launderette, but was told I couldn't put them in the tumble dryer without washing them first because of Health and Safety.

I saw one ball of the Ashes test in a television shop window as I passed. England lost a wicket.

Lunch at a bakery-cafe was 'stovies', another local speciality for my theme. This was a schooldinnerish plateful of diced boiled spuds slightly mashed round the edges – rather like me, still, after the night of too much wine in Coldstream – onions and chunks of meat, and accompanied by two oatmeal cakes. It was stodgy but good filling stuff for a cold wet day. Stove rating: Betty.

I trudged on through the rain up the A9. I was making some slow progress now the wind had dropped, but so had my spirits.

At Pitlochry I had some good news at last. I was too late for the tour of Bell's Distillery, but the helpful kilted bloke on reception gave me a free nip of the rather excellent 12-year-old Blair Atholl to warm me up. Bell rating: Bob Major.

I found a b&b, thawed out in the shower, and got dry for the first time in nine hours. Today was the solstice, the longest day of the year: it had certainly felt like it.

Dinner was haggis, neaps and tatties from a 'Scottish bistro'. The veg was slightly mushy-tasting, but the haggis rich and darkly spicy, and a nip or two of whisky was the perfect accompaniment. Water of life rating: We won't make a dram out of a crisis.

I finished the evening off with a couple of pints of 80 Shilling of forgotten brand in a forgotten pub. They tasted curiously of whisky, though that may have been wishful thinking. Shilling rating: Eightpence three-farthings.

Miles today: 58
Miles since Land’s End: 943

Day 16: Coldstream to Dunfermline

There are few better things in life than to wake refreshed after a fine night’s sleep in comfy bed.

As I now knew to my cost, having dozed fitfully on a lumpy sofa for three hours after a skinful of cheap red wine. I was elevated a little by yesterday’s Craster kippers for breakfast, tangy, oily and with a bracing smack of North Sea about them. I headed north out of Coldstream.



Lovely sunshine accompanied me through the rolling hills to Duns (pic), and abruptly I was in high moorland: the Lammermuir Hills, as featured in Donizetti’s opera Lucia di Lammermoor.

It’s famous for the heroine’s mad scene, when her bike is nicked from outside Pizza Express.

I picnicked at Whiteadder Reservoir (pic). Yesterday’s stop at Craster provided the rolled baked herring, fully rounded and fishy. Rolls rating: Royce.

I also had some Lockerbie mature cheddar, rich and mandarin-coloured. Orange rating: William.

My stottie from Duns, though, was disappointing: dry and powdery on the inside, stale on the outside. Felt older than it technically was. Dunn rating: Clive.



Once over the summit the view towards Edinburgh suddenly opened out (pic). I got a great 180-degree vista of the First of Forth and a long downhill into Auld Reekie, during which it started to throw it down, as it has for much of the trip.

The early-evening Royal Mile was grey and dripping wet. Tourist Info had a long queue of North American tourists looking for accommodation (and would have rushed me three quid for finding somewhere). There seemed little point in staying here tonight, when I wouldn’t have time for worthwhile sightseeing tonight or tomorrow morning, so I carried on.

Some city streets and railtrails got me to the Forth Bridge (pic), which was an exhilarating cycle.

I felt liberated as I scooted down on to the northern side of the estuary and into Dunfermline.

I found a b&b opposite the Abbots House (pic), and utilised the kitchen for dinner.

I still had cubes of goat’s cheese left over from Make Me Rich two days ago, and following the nice lady there’s suggestion, I tipped them over a salad. The cheese added bulk and taste to the leaves, while the oil served as an instant dressing. A decent local stottie accompanied it.

Afterwards I had a ‘singing hinny’, a local speciality that appeared to be a large flat scone. I had it warmed with butter, and it did that sconey thing of lining my teeth with fur. Fake fur, don’t worry. Singing rating: Slightly sharp, too much vibrato.

Miles today: 71
Miles since Land’s End: 885

Day 15: Amble to Coldstream

An action-packed day in Northumbria, more eventful than the mileage suggests.



I passed Warkworth’s imposing castle (pic), one of many on this rugged coast.

Most date from the 14th to the 16th centuries, a time of border wars, when Berwick was perhaps a bit more desirable a possession than nowadays.

This is an underrated, monumentally scenic corner of England.

It was quite a discovery for me, and I stopped frequently for snacks disguised as photo stops (pic).



I took a short detour to Craster harbour (pic). This is the Smoked Kipper Capital of the World, if your world is Northumberland anyway.

Conscious of my local-foods theme, I had a look at the smokehouse, where locally-caught kippers were being fumed (pic) as they have for hundreds of years.

If this smokehouse could talk, what tales it could tell.

Except it wouldn't be able to, for coughing.

With a couple of said kippers in my pannier for later use, I walked my bike along the coast path to Dunstanburgh Castle (pic).

I headed to Seahouses for more regional food: a small stottie (ie only the size of a frisbee) filled with local crab.

It was deliciously sweet and, well, crabby, and tasted invitingly of sea bottom, rather than freezer bottom. Crab rating: Knocked me sideways.

I also had a ‘Border Slice’: a tartan-coloured fruit and coconut cake with icing that was surprisingly unsickly, and a lot more pleasant than it sounded or looked. Border rating: Poland-Ukraine.

I fancied riding across the causeway to Holy Island, further up the coast, but the tide wouldn’t allow that until early evening. So I decided to spend the afternoon on a boat trip from Seahouses out to the Farne Islands to see puffins, razorbills and «guillemets», or possibly guillemots.



We retraced the route taken by Grace Darling (pic), in much rougher seas, one stormy night in 1838.

Grace spotted the remains of the SS Forfarshire, a passenger steamer en route from Hull to Dundee, which had run aground near the lighthouse after its boiler had failed. With her lighthouse keeper father, she rowed out in treacherous seas to rescue nine survivors.

Her bravery earned her instant international fame – which the quiet, modest young woman didn’t enjoy at all. She posed for portraits and sculptures; she was feted in gushing poems, songs and magazine articles; strangers turned up at the lighthouse demanding to meet her; the press wouldn't leave her alone; she even nearly got duped into making crass PR appearances in a trashy circus.

We can only imagine what effect this had on her mental and physical health; four years later, she died of TB, aged just 26.



Back on land, I phoned a friend of a friend. Tom was a cyclist who lived in Coldstream, and he invited me to stay, so I ditched the Holy Island idea and pedalled inland to his house. It was further than I expected, there was a rainstorm and traffic jams en route (pic), but I found his house in the town’s main square, half-expecting to dodge a band of guards practising some brass standards.

Tom couldn’t stay up late. He was a postie, that traditional role for gentle, thoughtful souls to earn money by cycling, and had to be up at four next morning.

However, his friend Caroline was staying, and we chatted over a bottle of wine.

And another... and another.

I’d thought there was something vaguely familiar about her, and it turned out she had visited my college 16 years earlier to see a schoolfriend; I’d probably met her then.

By the time we were clearing up and going to bed, Tom was up and showering and getting ready for work...

Miles today: 56
Miles since Land’s End: 814

Day 14: Durham to Amble

Groggy from another cooked breakfast of questionable local provenance, I headed for Stanley. I eventually found the Durham to Stanley railway path, and made good progress, listening to Mozart's late symphonies on my barbag disco.

Then I realised the path was actually going to another, different, wrong, Stanley.

Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into.

But we cycle tourists know how to turn things round, don't we? Metaphorically, as well as literally when you realise you've been going the opposite direction to the one intended.

I saw on the map that I was only three miles from Waterhouses, where some longtime family friends had a farm.

So I dropped in on Mike (pic) and Janice, who were surprised and delighted to see me, and had a lovely catch-up chat before Janice took some sheep to market.

Hilly back country roads let me avoid the A1 and took me to the Metro Centre, where I had a snacky lunch, and gawped rather at its retail vastness: over 200 shops, including three hairdressers.

Wow: it's clearly so big, you need a haircut just walking from one side the other.

Shopping centres are not my natural habitat. I wondered what on earth I was doing here. Of course, the Metro Centre could have provided me that service too: they have a resident chaplain.

I worked my way through Newcastle, and thinking of my local-food theme, dropped in on the Make Me Rich cheese farm – oh, very clever.

They were politely impressed by my trip concept and gave me a free jar of goat's cheese as a token of appreciation. I bought plenty too, of course, for picnicking later on.

Their Northumberland Original was a deliciously buttery, non-claggy, gentle and rich, a good everyday cheese: light on its feet but showing great skill. Stanley rating: Matthews.

Elsdon Goat was surprisingly non-goaty, chalky and slightly crumbly, like strong cottage cheese: unusual, powerful, perfectionist. Stanley rating: Kubrick.

A long level ride with a smiling tailwind – and, very unusually, rain-free skies – got me to Amble, where I got a b&b overlooking the harbour.

It felt a slightly odd place, with lots of youths hanging around in a forlorn rather than menacing way: more downtrodden Scottish island port than Northumbrian mainline-station staging-post. I had a night off the beer, and watched Yes, Prime Minister! on my room's telly.

Miles today: 64
Miles since Land’s End: 758

Day 13: Helmsley to Durham

A bumper hostel breakfast, all ingredients local. Except for the grapefruit, cereal, butter, toast, jam and milk. The water was regionally sourced though. And the tea was Taylor’s Yorkshire – grown, presumably, on the the lofty tea plantations of Dalby Forest.

The road north from Helmsley took me up and up into the clouds, past a green phone box (pic).

I wondered if the lady with green paint from Moorlinch had been at work, but apparently it’s all official: they camouflage them so as not to spoil the view, so that nobody, say, needing to call 999, is distracted by the red smudge in the distance.



I dropped down, exhilaratingly, out of the clouds (pic), like an aeroplane coming down to land at Gatwick. Once off the northern edge of the Moors, I headed along the plains to the ornate spires and Gothic towers of Middlesbrough. Oh, OK then, the chimneys and smokestacks.

Everything was fresh: the smell, the view, the freedom. Except for my shoes, which after nearly two weeks of heavy rain are getting suspiciously fungal. Clearly the trees round here have the same problem (pic).

In Yarm, a friendly wide-streeted market town that reminded me of Beverley, I had a rather splendid strawberry tart and coffee. Country lanes took me to Ferryhill, outside Durham, whose cathedral spire loomed out the mist.

I sat out a rainstorm, with rather practised weariness, with some excellent local fish and chips in Bob’s Fish Bar. A welcoming Mrs Bob let me sit inside in the dry.

On learning of my trip and its local-food theme, Bob gave me a free can of Coke. Well, maybe the steel had been locally forged in Middlesbrough. Or is it aluminium? Deep-fry rating: Batter my fish, three-person’d God.

It was still pouring when I’d eaten up, though, so I had to slosh through deep puddles and intense rain to Durham.

I went into the Tourist Info to find accomm just before it closed at four. But my heart sank, as deeply and damply as my tyres had done in the endless standing water on the way here.

I’m sorry, the assistant was telling a few disappointed waiting couples, there’s no rooms left in Durham tonight. You’ll have to drive to Newcastle.

Oh! There was no way I wanted to cycle another twenty miles tonight.

With the driving couples dismissed, though, things took a U-turn for the better.

Oh, you’re soaking, sit down and dry out for a minute, the nice lady assistant said.

No, I said, I’d better get cycling, you said Durham was full, so...

Cycling?, she said. And I told her about my trip, how I’d raised a grand for asthma research (which was true) and how I was eating only local food (which was true) and how everyone had been so helpful and friendly (which had got truer the more north I had got).

Right, she said smiling, wait a minute, and she made a phone call. Margaret? It’s Jean, hello! Oh yes, fine... now, I’ve got a young man here...

(Young man!)

...he’s cycling Land’s End to John o’Groats, and he’s raising money for asthma research... well I know, I thought of your Kayleigh... and he’s looking for somewhere to stay tonight but the B&Bs are full, and I thought maybe... yes.. yes, I’ll ask him...

She smiled at me. Is £15 all right?

(All right! Of course it’s all right!)

What a star. She’d obviously rung up one of her special-reserve accomm options, someone who’d do it occasionally for deserving cases only. I hope I didn’t look too pathetically grateful.

So, I had a lovely, cosy, chirpy family B&B just round the corner, with supper and big breakfast thrown in, and a comfy bed in Kayleigh’s old room now she was at college.

Ever since, I’ve had an abiding love of the Durham accent.



Happy, and showered and dried, I strolled round the centre (pic), and sat for half an hour simply admiring the Cathedral and its grand close, the river, the castle, the park.

I picnicked on a stottie. This, Tourist Info had assured me, was a local speciality: a breadcake the size of a vinyl LP, like some giant bracket fungus. A local bakery had filled it for me with local ham and salad, but to be honest it was all rather bland; sadly they were out of ‘Durham mustard’, which was either a local delicacy or another unsettling euphemism for something. Ham rating: Keanu Reeves.

The evening’s beer quest turned out OK, despite a fruitless search for ‘Durham Breweries Palatine Ale’, my guidebook recommendation.

First up was a pint of not-exactly-local Sam Smith’s Old Brewery Bitter from Tadcaster in the Swan and Three Cygnets. Rich oaky taste, smooth texture. Swan rating: Sails serenely by, won’t break the bank, or your arm.

Next was Newcastle Exhibition Ale in the Market Tavern. Slightly odd taste of cream soda on otherwise smooth, medium beer. Market rating: Boot sale.

Finally, Castle Eden Ale, brewed twenty minutes away, at the Brewer & Firkin. Barleysugar, slightly hoppy, refreshing. Firkin rating: Mind your language.

Miles today: 54
Miles since Land’s End: 694

Day 12: North Ferriby to Helmsley

I grew up here in Ferriby, and it was a small world. We occasionally went to Hull to the pictures, but we’d only been to York once. One sunny Whitsun bank hol circa 1968, we all drove up to see a butcher’s shop dad was thinking of buying.

It was an expedition. Mum packed the car with blankets, sandwiches and fizzy pop and a flask, plus barley sugars and I-Spy books for the trip, and dad had tools and spares for the car. Dad decided the shop wasn’t for him, me and my brother rolled down the grassy banks of Clifford’s Tower, we had a picnic, and we went home.

So in my mind, York was a long way from my parents’ house, where I’d rested over the weekend at my trip’s halfway point.

So I set off at half six, calorie-loaded with a full cooked breakfast, hoping to be there by lunch.

I actually arrived in good time for second breakfast, before the Shambles had opened (pic), and just as the market stalls were setting up.

Doh. Of course. York is not that far on a bike. Less than forty miles, a pleasurable three-and-a-bit hours of flat cycling on empty back lanes. Suddenly I had to recalibrate my childhood projection of the world.

My second breakfast was a carrot.

I explored York till three. I gaped at the majesty of the Minster inside and out (pic). I walked round the medieval City Walls, which date all the way back to Victorian times. I admired Mallard in the National Railway Museum (pic, below) and sniggered silently at the scruffy middle-aged lone white men getting excited about trains.

Then I realised I was one of them.

And I lunched. Inconveniently for the local-food theme of the trip, York didn’t seem big on regionally sourced cuisine. I had to make do with a (very tasty) Yorkshire Pudding at the Starre Inn, one the size of a dustbin lid and filled with Yorkshire ham, peas, carrots, spuds that were school-dinner-salty, and gravy.

I had a pint of Theakston’s Old Peculier, brewed up in Masham. A decent pint, sweet and caramel-chocolatey, but a tad watery and fizzy-pop-ish for my taste. Star rating: Middle-luminosity brown dwarf. Spectral peculiarities.

With plenty of daylight left I headed out north, neglecting to roll down the grassy banks of Clifford’s Tower in tribute to thirty years before.

Somewhere villagey I picnicked on a genuine Yorkshire Curd Cheesecake that I’d picked up from somewhere in Gillygate, made ‘up the road’.

It was very good, despite being yesterday’s bake at half-price: sweet cheese like mascarpone, gently gritty and unobtrusive currants, and decent pastry that didn’t flake drily like the Dead Sea Scrolls. Yesterday rating: All my [A7] troubles seemed so [Dm] far away.

Helmsley, a market town with a fine square on the southern edge of the North York Moors, provided my hostel home for the night.

I fancied a nice quiet beer in the Feathers. It had been the scene of a possible knifing incident earlier in the evening, apparently. The staff mentioned this quite nonchalantly, as if the ensuing spilled pint and sodden beermat was of more note.

Mindful of sample sizes in my research, I had two more pints of Old Peculier. This was much better: less chocolatey but less fizzy, still a full body but more rich back-of-the-mouth aftertaste. Feather rating: Double peacock.

Miles today: 64
Miles since Land’s End: 640

Day 11: North Ferriby

A rest day, at my parents’ house, somewhere round the halfway point of the trip.

I went for a morning swim with my dad, and felt stiffer after twenty minutes in the pool than I have after ten days of cycling. Next time I’m at an interview for a job I won’t get, I’ll know how to answer the question ‘What lengths will you go to in order to succeed?’. About eight or nine, I can tell them, and then I’m knackered.

We also went to his club and daily hangout, the British Legion. Not really my sort of place: the sweater-and-tie look, casual sexism, fear of the new, and worst of all terrible keg beer, don’t really tick my boxes. However, we played snooker, which does tick my boxes. I won one frame with a 22 clearance, trying hard to look unsurprised about it.



The main attraction of the day, though – celebrating my trip’s theme of traditional local food – was a proper Sunday Roast, Yorkshire pudding and all (pic). My request to mum at first was to make it as traditional as possible, like the dinners of her childhood. However, we decided that austerity-Britain rations, powdered egg, three to a bed and outside loos was authenticity we could do without.

But I had my best meal of the trip so far. Here are my tasting notes:

Yorkshire pudding in onion gravy Traditional starter. Creamy batter, crisp but not brittle on the outside, soft inside. Proper gravy from the meat. Delicious, thick, glowing flavours. Snooker rating: Silky cut on the brown.

Roast beef, spuds, veg High-quality beef sourced by dad from his butcher’s shop, tender and deeply flavoured. Spuds from the farm shop, roasted perfectly in the beef fat. Peas, carrots, caulis, and broccoli substituting the more accurate, but yesterday unobtainable, swede. Snooker rating: Long straight black and screw back for the easy red.

Strawberries and cream The teenage mum would have had Yorkshire pudding again for afters, with treacle this time. (And note that her dad and grandad would have had most or all of the meat.) We had the modern luxury of small-and-sweet fresh local strawberries and regional cream. Snooker rating: Doubled red into the middle, set up on the pink.

Wine Mum’s lot, of course, would simply have had a jug of water to wash their dinner down. In the pampered late 20th century we had the world’s wines, offering excellent quality at very affordable prices, right there on our local supermarket shelves. But instead we had dad’s home made. Snooker rating: In off the green. Foul and a miss.

Miles today: 0
Miles since Land’s End: 576

Day 10: Lincoln to North Ferriby

A short day, ending with a trip over the Humber Bridge to my parents’ place in the village of North Ferriby, where I grew up.



I explored Lincoln in the morning (pic), hunting and gathering local specialities for later picnic purposes. There were plenty of regionally-sourced items on offer – Lincolnshire sausages; Lincolnshire haslet; Lincolnshire plum bread; Lincolnshire cheese. Perhaps there’s little else to do here but make food. Fine by me.

I looked around the fine cathedral, and the quaint cobbled Steep Hill which is, indeed, surprisingly acute for a supposedly ironing-board-flat county.

But Lincoln also boasts the UK’s only Roman-era arch over a public highway: Newport Arch, on Bailgate (pic), from where the old Ermine Street barrels along dead straight, north up to the Humber.

The Arch is rather low, but not because they were shorter then: the ground level has risen up, bolstered by centuries of building rubble.

Having explored the city, I headed out north, but not up Ermine St, which was busy and unpleasant, even on this Saturday morning: I took a parallel hilltop lane, which gave me grand views over the plains to the horizon to my left.

After a week of near-total rain, I was well overdue a sunny, warm, dry day. By the end of the day I was even more overdue: it was dull, cold and damp, but at least it didn’t actually rain. Much.

I stopped for lunch in Kirton Lindsay, a rather drab and run-down feeling place with a shabby little square. The village shop had no Guardian so I bought an Independent. It happened to have a travel feature on Hull, so I amused myself by identifying the mistakes and misconceptions. Then I realised I’d written it.

My local-speciality lunch special was, well, rather special.

Haslet, pronounced ‘haze-let’, is a sort of yellowbelly haggis: a meatloaf made of pork offal, whose name comes from the old French for ‘entrails’. It was like tasty luncheon meat. Arch rating: Triumphal.

The plum bread confirmed my suspicion that all these ’regional special/delicacy’ bread cakes (Bath Buns, Dundee Cakes, Melton Hunt Cake etc) are in fact all essentially the same thing: a bread roll with too many raisins. This one was doughy, moist and sweet, but sweet moist dough is not my idea of a wholesome lunch. Arch rating: Depressed.

The Easter Dawn goat’s-cheese was good, though: brick-sized and of a similar heft, with a capric, back-of-throat pungency. Arch rating: Marble.

Recharged, I clambered up the steps of Kirton Lindsay Mill (pic) to enjoy the view of the epic surrounding mountains, lakes, valleys, forests and plains.

Actually, I was exaggerating about the mountains, lakes, valleys and forests.

The mill was ace, though: fully working and grinding its own flour, some of which I bought to take to mum’s tonight.

Its cafe also had excellent Lincoln & York coffee and home-made walnut cake, and I was very much enjoying my trip’s local-food shtick.

I was born and brought up in North Ferriby, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, on the north bank of the Humber. It looks across the waters to South Ferriby, in Lincolnshire.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Lincolnshire was a mystical far-off land I’d seen every day, just a mile away, but on a different planet. We’d never been there; it was sixty miles by road.

For bizarre reasons of geography and location of transmitters, our regional ITV was not Yorkshire but Anglia. We had news of bank raids in Ipswich, and ads for car showrooms in Norwich and furniture warehouses in Diss.

It was all rather strange.

Anyway, I visited a village fete in South Ferriby just as it was packing up, in a cold bleak playing field, and snaffled a home-made cake while some cycle tourists en route to Beverley engaged me in conversation.

I found it sweet but rather uninteresting. The conversation, that is, not the cake, which was fine.

Passing the Rugby Cement Works that had been the backdrop to my childhood, I rode over the Humber Bridge (pic), opened 1981, and still the longest bridge in the world you can cycle across.

By tea time I was back in my teenage home, with my mum and dad, and sitting at a table creaking with food and drink.

They really should get that table seen to.

Mum rustled up my Lincolnshire sausages, which were excellent: Plump, full-flavoured, rounded, perhaps a tad over-saged, but juicy and fatty and shrank properly on grilling. Bridge rating: Golden Gate.



In keeping with the local-produce theme, I enjoyed a session with my dad of his home-made wine (pic), made from brambles from the field at the back.

Making your own wine is easy, straightforward and inexpensive. To anyone thinking of taking up the activity, I’d have one useful piece of advice: don’t. Bridge rating: Tacoma Narrows.

Miles today: 48
Miles since Land’s End: 576

Day 9: Leicester to Lincoln

It may have been Friday the 13th, but it was the best day of the trip so far: half-decent weather, which is 50% more decency than hitherto, and some world-beating local food and drink experiences. Especially the drink.

I enjoyed my best traditional English Breakfast so far – the kitchen staff clearly knew their onions, bacon, mushrooms etc. Unlike most London hotels, staff here – Ms Patel, Ms Kumar and Mr Desai – were all local. I thanked them for my pleasant experience of Leicester.

My bike needed some attention, and Leicester’s Bike Park workshop came up trumps for this particular joker, opening at 8am and fixing my dodgily-seated rear tyre and stiff chain quickly and with a smile. They also gave me a free water bottle, which handily for my ride’s theme, came preloaded with genuine locally-sourced Leicester water.

Happy and re-energised, I soon made it to Melton Mowbray, pork pie capital of the world, and to Ye Olde Porke Pie Shoppe: the city centre emporium of Dickinson & Morris, the Rolls-Royce of gelatinous chunks of pig in hot-water pastry.

I mentioned to the staff that I was riding the End to End, sampling the best of local food en route. Word got to the PR-savvy manager, and within minutes I was being interviewed by a friendly scribbler and pictured by a laconic snapper for the local paper (pic).

Most important, I got a free pork pie out of it.

And there was more. The journo suggested that, in line with my theme, I might want to visit this gourmet cheese shop for some local Stilton, that gourmet bakery for local speciality Melton Hunt Cake, and perhaps, just maybe, or actually perhaps it’s too far out your way, oh you probably wouldn’t be interested, The Old Brewery pub in Somerby, which makes the World’s Strongest Beer, no just forget I ever said it.

I had a few misgivings about this. It was only lunchtime, and I wouldn’t want to risk too much cheese on an empty stomach.

So I bought some for later, and hurtled off to said pub (pic).

Barrie Parish, the landlord and world-record brewer, was impressed by the concept of my trip and offered me a free pint of his global-chart-topping brew, Baz’s Bonce Blower.

Mindful of its barley-wine strength – 12% – I declined, and had two halves instead.

Postcard writing can be a time-consuming occupation, and I could hardly abuse Mr P’s generosity, so I bought a couple more halves before resuming my trip.

Obviously not the Bonce Blower, but soft drinks. Well, relatively soft.

My tasting notes, as far as I can read the writing, are as follows.



Special Bitter: light, hoppy, fresh, clean, a good snacking beer. Local newspaper headline rating: Body found in cemetery.

Poacher’s: complex, dark, rich, smooth, not ponderous though. Local newspaper headline rating: Man held over fire.

Baz’s Bonce Blower: A Christmas pudding of a beer that you could easily hide silver threepences in. Rich, dark, sweet, heavy. Raisins, fruit jam. Local newspaper headline rating: Porn film row: Council leader to act.

I headed up to Lincoln with a song in my heart. And a lot of ethyl alcohol in my head.



I did a double-take, and then a triple-take, at a signpost (pic) that appeared to point to a placename that would certainly be pulled up by AOL’s obscenity filter.

No, it wasn’t a trick of the light ale. Someone had clearly been at work with a screwdriver, rearranging the letters. It originally pointed to PICKWELL, I eventually realised.



It was still only just past one o’clock. My picnic lunch (pic) was pork pie, cheese, and that tasty Leicestershire water, with a grand view of rolling countryside and creatively vandalised fingerposts.

It was splendid, and my tasting notes are thus.

Melton Hunt Cake Like Christmas pudding, or perhaps I was still thinking of the Bonce Blower. Too many raisins. Over-rated; too rich for its own good. Hunt rating: Jeremy*.

Stilton Lovely. Moist but firm, like a strong custard slice. Liberated fungal tastes, deliciously pungent. Posh and attractive: you could put this alongside Joanna Lumley. Hunt rating: Gareth.

Dickinson & Morris Pork Pie Superb. Chunky pork with spicy aftertaste, luscious pastry, silky gelatine. Suave, assured, world-beating. Hunt rating: James.



A succession of quiet minor roads, and a narrow wooden footbridge across a ford swollen by recent rains (pic), got me to handsome Lincoln. A good day got better: unlike other hostels so far, this one had a room for clothes to dry out.

I needed to dry out too, in all senses, and didn’t fancy the town’s raucous Friday-night pubs, so had a quiet happy evening thanking my lucky stars. Some of which were orbiting my head.

Miles today: 72
Miles since Land’s End: 528

* I wrote up this blog in 2020, based on the comprehensive notes I took at the time. Then, of course, Jeremy Hunt was a harmless nobody, instead of a dangerous nobody now. If you prefer a non-anachronistic Hunt, I suggest Quorn, because that makes me sick too. Which applies to both the hunt and the hairy mycoprotein.