I'd ridden much of this route in smaller chunks over the years, so had a pretty good idea how stringing it together would work out. Similarly, I had a working knowledge of the industrial background of the places I was cycling through. Doing the tour as a continuous whole, though, and researching it before I went, really brought home to me that the tracks I prefer riding almost all owe their origins to the UK's industrial past.

I found myself moving through a landscape extensively reworked by the hand of man, layers of history stamped out on top of each other: Roman and medieval roads, drovers' tracks, paved packhorse routes, defunct tramways, quarrying tracks, re-purposed railway and canal paths. The shape of the land itself altered during the course of the Nineteenth Century: streams and rivers dammed, water released in floods to wash away soil and rock; reservoirs built to feed canal systems, and to provide clean drinking water to an increasingly urban population; hillsides and escarpments quarried out for the stone and coal this development required; shafts and pits dug into the ground to extract the metals and resources needed for construction - and war. Poking around through the evidence of this past enhanced the trip and gave it extra depth.

I think we need to get more local in many aspects of the way we live – and that includes the bike trips we do. Becoming more acquainted with our personal histories enhances what we do in the present, and perhaps gives us some insight into the future.

I went for a short ride a few days after cycling from Keighley to Smithy Bridge. Riding up out of Rochdale as I did on the first day of the tour, I initially followed the Cotton Famine Road (1860s) before turning west and passing through the now dormant Ding Quarry (Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries). The track beyond leads onto the summit of Rooley Moor, linking up 26 giant wind turbines erected in 2008, before dropping down towards the old Naden reservoirs (completed 1856).

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Wind turbines are a hugely contentious issue, but I found myself wondering how they'll be seen in 150 years. Will the broad gravel access tracks break up and fade back into the landscape, as the packhorse tracks have done? Will our post-technological descendants speculate upon what function these rusting, truncated towers served – or will they simply strip them of metal to make jewellery and crude weapons, before heading back downhill into the shattered ruins of what was once Greater Manchester...?

Yeah, I know, too much post-apocalyptic fiction. Hey, I grew up in the 1970s, and I need something to keep me occupied when I'm cranking the pedals.

Makes you think, though, eh?

NOTE: I post updates on more industrial relics on my blog as I find them.