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  • Another micro tour. This time N and I ran the "Route YC Adventure Weekender" which is a bit of a mouthful. I've never been to Yorkshire before so was excited to see what all the fuss was about "The North"

    The route is designed to start and end at Whitby, but I couldn't wrangle any accommodation for the saturday in scarbourough so we drove up on the friday night and stayed in Beacon House Bunks, just to the south of the southernmost tip of the route. The intention was to do the route with the correct anti clockwise direction, but do day one northbound, sleep in YHA Whitby, then do the inland southbound portion of the route as day two.

    The first day was a very easy ride up the coast, the majority of which was on NCN 1. As we were climbing a hill a local roadie pulled up beside us and recommended we detour from the route (Which he seemed to be familiar with) and head to the esplanade near scarborough to stop at Nova Coffee, which was a great idea. Very nice espresso and biscoff slice. The doughnuts looked alright but I saw the barista discreetly restocking them from a Sainsbury's bakery bag, so maybe cut out the middle man on that one.

    We didn't dawdle for too long in Scarborough after coffee but it looked fairly standard for a British Seaside town. It is absolutely rammed with retirees in camper vans "living the dream" so bear that in mind, but if you don't engage with them it's normally fine. (Aside: How long until half man half biscuit release a song denigrating people with VW conversions or their close relatives, people with vintage landrovers and roof tents?) Not long after leaving scarborough the route joins the "Cinder Path" which is a classic rail trail, so gentle inclines, fishtank gravel surface, recreational walkers and the like. It does take you along the coast itself so sea views are abundant. We stopped for lunch at Redcar Tearooms which had a great jacket potato and arrived in Whitby a few hours later giving us hours and hours to have a look around. YHA whitby is pleasant enough but isn't one of the more modern YHAs with loads of charging points and sturdy bunks, so keep that in mind. Arrive early and commandeer one of the lower bunks ASAP.

    I don't remember where we ate in whitby. We walked around a lot trying to find the "Best" vegan fish and chip place, but it felt quite thankless and in the end we just ate at whichever was closest. I actually think I'm totally over eating huge amounts of chips by the seaside on cycling trips. The chips never taste as good as I hope they will and just seem to make me feel bloated and sleepy. Anyway, we turned in early because we were both a bit worried about the next day, which had an extra 10km of distance and more than doubled the climbing of day one, with fewer potential stop or resupply points.

    This was possibly also the trip that I began to fall out of love with YHA breakfasts. Maybe familiarity is breeding contempt but I didn't feel like we got 10 pounds worth of value out of this one. Especially because we were in a rush to get going. The evening before I had stared through the window of "Mr Cooper's Coffee House" and seen the twin signifiers of reasonable coffee service: An EK 43 grinder and a Slayer espresso machine so we eagerly pulled in just before leaving town. Another recommended spot, they also looked like they would sell you various filled bagels to go, which I think could have been a good option for refuelling. Either way the espressos were lovely.

    Our assessment of day 2 was largely correct, it was the inland leg of the trip and had lots of the 20% gradients that I had been told to expect from yorkshire. The type of climbs you barely manage to pedal rather than push, only to be rewarded with 30 seconds of terrifying descending which ends in a blind hairpin turn, forcing you to scrub all speed before you can get close to the next climb. At some point we brought ourselves up onto the Yorkshire Moors which were a pleasantly distinct biome. I saw some Northern Lapwings, Golden Plovers, a Meadow Pippit and a Lesser Spotted Orchid, so if you're doing the trip and are at all interested I recommend bringing some optics with you. Probably one of the highlights of the route as well because there were some fun descents and the roads seemed quite empty.

    We had brought lunch with us (Luchito refried beans in the plastic pouch, tortillas, guac, salad leaves) so we stopped to put it together by the North Yorkshire Moors Railways Levisham station, got to check out some steam trains and a vintage diesel. The Lockton Tearooms and gallery followed soon after another gruelling hill climb and I could quite easily have had a nap under their shade umbrellas. Their food looked great but as we had already eaten we just had some cake and espresso. Great espresso, quite distinctive handleless cups (Mr Cooper's Tearoom had standard loveramics and Nova coffee was just a van so we provided our own enamel espresso cups, which we always travel with, obviously)

    Things didn't really get any easier, but there were a few slightly hairy paths in the latter half of the day. Overall the route is quite close to a touring bike route, and I think many people on here would have been comfortable riding it on 32s, but I didn't feel too bad being on larger slicks for a bit of the riding we did through dalby forest, but it also was exceptionally pretty and felt quite distinctively different from other tours I've done, which was welcome because we did have to drive about 5 hours to get here.

    The last 15 or so km from East Ayrton to Hunmanby (where we had parked) however, were quite grim. I think if I was doing this again I would have driven the car to East Ayrton on the Saturday morning and started and ended our loop from there. Sunday afternoon driving is generally bad at the worst of times and I guess that part of the route just has no other alternatives, but I spent most of my time with my heart in my mouth as we suffered deranged passes from almost every car that went past us (and there was a lot of cars). It didn't help that there was a final 20% screamer with minimal verge and continual passes. Still we got it done.

    Whilst we decompressed at the Hunmanby war memorial (never forget) a fine gentleman came over and on hearing we hadn't eaten, offered us a spare portion of chips he had been given "by mistake" when he had gone to pick up his pizzas from the local Chinese restaurant (...) "We don't eat chips in our house." he told us. I have no idea what he was talking about but as you can imagine, we fell onto his surplus portion with little encouragement.

    The ancient looking pub next to us had a bunch of men cheering someone in a Nissan 350Z every time he revved loudly so we loaded the bikes up before their attention could turn to us and drove home. We took the humber bridge for 1.50 to try and save time then got stuck in total gridlock on the M180 for an hour. Oh well. Good trip though.


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