40 CONTEXT 178 : DECEMBER 2023 IAN WRAY Zen and the art of cycling exploration A tour on Britain’s national cycle network will take you off-road on disused railways and on little-used minor roads, to remote and unexpected places, and little-seen landscapes. ‘In a car you’re always in a compartment… you’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re in the scene not just watching it anymore and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing past five inches below your feet is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on. It’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it…’ In his introduction to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M Pirsig is talking about a motorcycle journey. But the same logic surely applies to pedallers, and perhaps that is what has motivated me to take an annual holiday on a bit of the national cycle network, with friends Gary, Alison, Louise and John. The network is something we can thank the Millennium Project for. Coordinated by Sustrans, the cycle path charity, there are now 14,700 miles of cycle routes, many off-road on disused railways, or on little-used minor roads that go from nowhere to nowhere. Like Pirsig, we love these back roads. As he puts it, the pace of life is different here, they are not going anywhere. If you take an end-to-end journey (returning by rail), it will be a transect through Britain. It will take you to remote and unexpected places, and little-seen landscapes. This year we chose Humberside and Lincolnshire, which we thought flat and suitable for our advancing years. Our starting point was York Cathedral and finishing line Lincoln Cathedral. Everyone knows the glories of York Minster. Only cyclists get to see the northern edge of central York. It is a little masterpiece of sensitive regeneration and development. Buildings of just the right height and just the right textures and tones, weaving in perfectly with the waterways. A few miles further on we are in Stamford Bridge. The visitor centre is shut but Alison is very persuasive and we manage to talk our way in to see a little-known marvel: the Stamford Bridge Tapestry. You may remember that before his ill-fated encounter with the Normans, King Harold had taken the road north to see off The Londesborough Arms in Market Weighton (Photo: Alison Seymour)
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