Day 15, 1st June 2011, Hull to Scarborough
After an uneventful overnight ferry crossing to Hull, we had a bit of a hold up in the city. Riding into Zeebrugge, Roz’ pannier rack broke. The only spares other than puncture repair stuff that we carry are cable ties, which we used to secure the rack temporarily. In Hull we got a new rack fitted, and had some minor work done on Roz gears. Unfortunately they are still not right.
We had decided, depending on weather, that we would either go north more or less along the coast, or if it was less clement, than go inland towards York. The longer-term objective is to get to Newcastle, from where we will head west along the Hadrian’s Wall route.
We have a large scale map of the UK major bike routes. From this we chose to follow route 65 out of Hull and then join up with route 1 going north along the coast. This part of Route 1 is also the North Sea route, and we have ridden on the other side of the route, north through Denmark.
The path out of Hull is great, being a rail trail for the first 20km or so. These trails always have a very even grade, as you would expect. This was a good one as it did not go through cuttings and tunnels, so we could see the countryside.
We had a pleasant day’s riding meandering though the Yorkshire wold, before arriving in Scarborough.
The quality of the bike infrastructure in the UK is nowhere near as good as in Flanders. While there is a good attempt at making provision for bikes in the town traffic, there is little in the way of dedicated bike lanes, usually just an easement alongside the road. However, this is not a problem. Mostly it is possible to find farm lanes, if you lose the bike route, which in turn uses mostly farm lanes.
We had a good easy day’s ride, with mostly tail winds, in pleasant mild weather. Difficult to ask for more. Distance covered was 91km.
This will be posted a day late as the Travelodge chain in the UK wants to charge for WiFi, and can’t even get that right.
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