I’ve always been fascinated by the quirky, the unique, the extreme. Especially if I can cycle to it. Perhaps it’s a consequence of growing up in a house whose only books were the AA Road Atlas and the Guinness Book of Records.
I’ve been collecting weird places to ride ever since. Netherton Tunnel, in the West Midlands, for instance: a mile-and-a-half-long canal tunnel that’s a psychological challenge rather than physical–the ghostly acoustic and pitch dark is one of Britain’s scariest rides. Or the vertiginous aqueduct at Pontcysyllte outside Llangollen that’s like cycling a Niagara Falls tightrope: no wonder they ask you to dismount. Or Blackbushe Airfield in Surrey, whose disused runways make the widest ‘cycle paths’ you’ll see in Britain. Or Yate’s ‘Road to Nowhere’ near Bristol: a 1970s dual carriageway that somehow never got properly connected to the road network, and is now used as a film set, making a strange all-to-yourself cycle experience.
And many others. Yorkshire’s Spurn Head, a three-mile spit of sand sometimes barely wider than the tarmac track that goes way out into the North Sea. An underpass on NCN1 in the Lee Valley that could be Britain’s lowest headroom, just five feet: duck or
