July 31, 1962
Dacre Banks - Holmfirth
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
Today we would ride through the hilly and highly urbanised West Riding of Yorkshire. The Woollen District as it used to be called. I didn’t know this at the time but during these first two days we would climb in and out of the valleys of all Yorkshire’s Pennine rivers, except the most-northerly Swale. We pulled up and out of of Nidderdale, past the USAF listening station at Menwith Hill, whose personnel were destined to be a little busier than usual in a couple of months, then dropped into Wharfedale, by-passing Otley, We ate our packed lunch sitting on a grassy bank on the North-eastern edge of Bradford, before riding end to end, through the city itself. I remember noticing the nameplates of a series of evidently aspirational streets ,possibly named by a well-intentioned, patriarchal mill-owner: Perserverance St. Thrift St. Industry St. The next town, out of Airedale was Brighouse in the Calder valley followed by the Colne at Huddersfield. and then into the more rural, apart from the tractor factory, Meltham Mills. We arrived at the YH on the Manchester Rd. in Holmfirth around opening time, 5pm. Holmfirth is now famous for being the location of the soft-centred TV sit-com, Last Of The Summer Wine, famous for trying to press a laugh out of senior citizens sliding down local hillsides in old bathtubs when not pestering widows with wrinkled nylons. The Youth Hostel is no more.
Today's ride: 66 km (41 miles)
Total: 158 km (98 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 1 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |