Leyburn, England: Oh happy (if exhausting) day!

July 10, 2015

DON'T be misled. We rode just 57km today. But we also did 891 metres of climbing. To put that in perspective, that's enough to get you over all but the really big passes in the Tour de France.

We also tackled, slowly, a 25 per cent gradient. The sign said it was and for once I agreed. The British once held their national hill-climbing championship there.

But what rewards! We have had an utterly beautiful day of steep roads, long valleys, whooshing descents and green, deeply green, countryside. We are in Yorkshire, where Yorkshiremen tell you everything is better than elsewhere - and when it comes to scenery, they have a good point.

We left the coalyard before the close friends and the unrambling rambler were up. The girls had been on the beer and I've no idea about the rambler.

We set off up Wharfedale, one of the long, pretty valleys of the Yorkshire Dales, shedding clothes as we went. We stopped in Linton, because it looked pretty, and before long we were joined by a bright-eyed 77-year-old who pointed out where the youth hostel used to be and spoke of how cyclists had once gathered beside the stream.

Linton: we stopped because it was pretty

"The hostel brought in lots of people but in the end it was only opening at weekends. And then it died. It was bought for a couple of hundred thousand. It must be worth a million now."

It's become the sort of rural restaurant that has a driveway from the street and a swinging sign on a post.

"All holiday homes here now," our new friend lamented. "There are seven over there and another seven over there. I've lived here all my life and I used to farm up there."

He pointed vaguely towards the hills.

"The village was my home but now my wife is up at 4am and packing. We're moving out."

He said with an air of resignation. I sensed his wife was keener to leave than he was.

I pointed to a metal plaque across the road.

"Ah, that," he said, suddenly brightening up. "That's the Holiday Fellowship. It used to be outside the youth hostel. Then someone stole it and we lost trace of it. And then years later someone spotted it in a garden a long way from here. So it was stolen back and set in concrete so it can't happen again." He said it with an air of conspiratorial mischief.

I'd never heard of the Holiday Fellowship. It has a 1920s ring to it, doesn't it, an air of nailed leather boots and long corduroy shorts. Turns out that's pretty much it, although it runs cycling holidays as well.

The old animal pound and shit pit at Linton. It must have been lovely to live across the road

Across the road was a stone enclosure opposite a stone house. A cuddly woman tending to her garden and looking very much as though she hoped I'd come over for a chat, straightened up with difficuty and explained.

"Originally it was a pinfold," she said, "a place to keep stray animals. There was another one higher up the village. Then it fell out of use and it became a midden, somewhere you tipped the contents of animal sheds. That's how they show it on maps now, but when we excavated it, we found so many cobbles that we're sure they wouldn't have taken that much trouble for a midden.

Lovely Kettlewell. "Kettle well and truly on" said the café sign

We rode on and, after a break in the wonderful café at Kettlewell that boasts its services to cyclists - including a footpump - we had the alarming experience of a sign warning that a one-in-four hill lay in our way. The hill I was talking about.

Lithe young men with foreign names can ride hills like that, provided they're on Tour de France bikes. On a loaded touring bike, you have no chance. And so we pushed, often with all the strength we had. Sometimes we doubled up, two people to a bike. And we did it.

At the top, symphonic scenery that gets in your DNA. Hills rolled in visual thunder across the horizon. Valleys with muscular names like Grindbrook Clough attracted tiny figures of walkers making their slow, persistent progress across a vast landscape. Walls of balanced dry rocks held in sheep or sometimes nothing at all.

The air was freshly minted, exhilarating. And often needed in quantity. It was paradise.

We took it gently, savouring the hours, undeterred by the rudeness of a pub owner who grumbled that "all cyclists normally want is a glass of water and 'Can I use the toilet, please?'"

And by the end of day we took the smaller climb into Leyburn where, after Karen had sorted out a bearing problem at a bike shop, we rode out of town and camped behind a pub.

Behind a pub. A perfect day had ended perfectly.

A well-earned drink before heading for the campground

Today's ride: 57 km (35 miles)
Total: 1,622 km (1,007 miles)

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