Off Season - Ups and Downs

The good

And the not so good

Off

And the cycling holiday award goes to.....

Awards are jolly nice things to have.  We have been lucky to have been given a few and it certainly swells the heart with pride to put that certificate on the wall.  Blowing ones' own trumpet is de riguer when presented with an award and the hotels we use for our tours are not slow to do so.  Recently we have been sent several emails informing us of gongs most gratefully received.  As they are for hotels and areas we have picked out as being the best for our cycling holidays, it affirms what we already knew.

For example Cotswold House in Chipping Campden has just been awarded Spa of the Year by Laterooms.  We include this hotel on many of our luxury Cotswolds tours including "Cotswolds and Stonhenge".  Lucknam Park near Chippenham was given the Travellers Choice award in the Spa section by Trip Advisor  and is a favourite with our clients looking for the 5 star treatment on our Simply The Best tour.  The Cotswolds Inns group won small hotel group of the year from the AA and own several stunning hotels in this highly popular and frequently booked area.  London topped the Conde Nast vote for Best City and Devon claimed silver in the Best Holiday County category in the British Travel Awards. Neither of these came as much of a surprise but both offer fabulous cycling and accommodation and so are perfect for our clients.

As the year draws to a close there will be more plaudits to come for sure.  Hopefully we will need to make some room in the trophy cabinet. 

Our Top 5 Hotels With Swimming Pools

Whately Manor

A gentle swim is most welcome after a long day cycling. The following hotels with pools are on many of our cycling holiday routes.  Here is our top 5.

1. Whatley Manor Hotel, Malmesbury - A beautiful Cotswolds hotel with excellent spa facilities
2. Christchurch Harbour Hotel, Mudeford - A seaside retreat with a pool big enough to stretch your legs in.

3. Wallets Court, Dover - A classic British country house in the Garden of England boasting an endless pool trainer jet.
4. Hempstead House, Sittingbourne - A stunning Kent hotel with pool facilities to match.
5. Royal Crescent Hotel, Bath - An iconic hotel with a beautiful relaxation pool heated to a toasty 35 degrees.

5 Great Places to Eat in Plymouth

Treat yourself and enjoy these wonderful eateries as a finale to our cycling holiday  Devon Coast to Coast Tour

• Tanner Brothers, Prysten House, Finewell St, Plymouth, PL1 2AE  01752 252001. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Located in a grade 1 listed building, and owned by brothers Chris and James, they major on locally sourced produce with a variety of menus from set to gastronomic tasting.
• River Cottage Canteen, Royal William Yard, Plymouth . PL1 3QQ. 01752 252702. Closed Sundays and Mondays. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's latest creation is housed in a waterside ex Royal Navy victualling depot with a theatre kitchen and a wooden fired oven. Ethically sourced food.
• Arthouse, 38 Looe Street  Plymouth, PL4 0EB 01752 206114. Closed Mondays and Sunday lunch. The veteran Arts Centre includes this revamped restaurant which uses meat from it's own farm shop. Until 8pm you can take advantage of a £12 cinema/meal deal and add the movie of the day afterwards?
• Morgans,  19 Princess Street, Plymouth.PL1 2EU. 01752 255579. This modern restaurant situated in  the heart of Plymouth offers the best of Italian Mediterranean cuisine
• Bistro One, 68 Ebrington Street  Plymouth, PL4 9AQ 01753 313315. Closed Sundays and Mondays. This jolly little off-centre restaurant is one of Plymouth's finest, thanks to its wine-loving owner, Stephen Barrett. It's big on fresh seafood, Yealm river oysters, hand-made breads and vegetarian dishes

A Deli to Die For

Last night we attended a networking event organised by Tourism Southeast.  Over 30 people were there including representatives from hotels, tourist attractions, and tourist boards.  It was a great opportunity to meet other people working in the same industry in this area.  The added bonus was the location.  No 2 Pound Street in Wendover is a deli with a difference.  It stocks a huge selection of wines, cheeses and meats which can be taken away or enjoyed on the premises.  They recently won Best New Retailer at the British Cheese Awards which is not surprising when you see the interesting selection on offer including Stinking Bishop which should be handled with care.  The deli sits in the pretty Chiltern town of Wendover which is at the end of our new Challenging Chilterns tour.  We recommend leaving some space in your panniers for a few goodies.

Bliss all the way to Padstow

The well pedalled Camel Trail from Wadebridge to Padstow is a family must - flat, traffic free and scenically beautiful as it skirts the Camel estuary along a disused railway line. Bike hire establishments lurk around every corner of  Wadebridge and the lure of a Rick Stein goody at the other end may entice or repel you depending on your pocket size and leanings.
But for me the more enjoyable (and far less busy) section of the Camel Trail is what comes before Wadebridge - the ride down from the NW edge of  Bodmin Moor along the pretty Camel valley.  Close to the the beginning of the traffic free section is the village of Blisland which easily lives up to its name. John Betjamin waxed lyrical about its Norman church with its unexpectedly dramatic interior and others have enjoyed its excellent pub.This is a village with some very fine houses, the Elizabethan Mansion House - and a green, something unique in Cornwall.  From here you can freewheel down to the trail for 17 miles of traffic free flat cycling. Whoever heard of that in hilly Cornwall?  Steep valley sides gradually give way to more open country as the river  threads its way downhill and you spin past platforms named Shooting Range and Grogley Hall.. Paul Jackson's pottery studio and the medieval river bridge both at Helland are highlights.

Tack this ride onto our Devon Coast to Coast Tour and bliss it will be.

Things you never knew about Easter Eggs.

With Easter on the horizon, thoughts turn to chocolate naturally, but why do we give eggs? The custom celebrates new life and like any excuse to indulge, we have taken to it with gusto. But eggs are not just for eating it seems.

Pace Eggs are hard boiled eggs with patterned shells, they are traditional in northern parts of England at Easter, with local variants in the name, such as Paste Eggs. The name is derived from Pesach (Passover). Decorating and colouring eggs for Easter was a common custom in England in the middle ages. Eggs were brightly coloured to mimic the new, fresh colours of spring. The practice of decorating eggs was made even more famous by King Edward I of England who ordered 450 eggs to be gold-leafed and coloured for Easter gifts in 1290.

Egg rolling is very popular in England and is an Easter Monday sport. Hard-boiled eggs are rolled down a hill. Customs differ from place to place. The winner's egg may be the one that rolls the farthest, survives the most rolls, or is rolled between two pegs.

Another activity that takes place on Easter Day is the playing of a game with the eggs known as "jarping", It's a bit like playing conkers, with players tapping their opponents' eggs until one breaks. The winner goes through to the next round, and so on until there is only one egg left unbroken. copyright of projectbritain.com A good hit by a jarper is called a "dunch". The game is popular in County Durham, where it is played on Easter Sunday.

Canterbury and Faversham like many UK towns are holding Easter Egg hunts over the holiday. The perfect excursion from our Gourmet Tour which begins and ends in Canterbury. Chocs away!

How a tandem can open up the world

On the pm radio programme yesterday, a thrilled blind lady was featured - she had just been cycling on a tandem. Through Companion Cycling, a charity based in Surrey, people with disabilities are able to take to a bike and enjoy the wow feeling we all get from pedalling away.

Last summer, we had our own tandem wow, when Erik Weihenmayer took his young family cycling with us in Oxfordshire. Erik, who lives in Colorado is the only blind man to have reached the Everest summit which he did in 2001. His life reads like an action man Oscar and his autobiography, Touch The Top of the World is a source of inpsiration to all of us.  Now married, his wife took the front saddle of the tandem and with their two children following, they rode out of Oxford along the rural Thames to start their adventure with us. We had made some adjustments to the tandem before their arrival as the front rider is not usually the smaller of the pair. All went well and we were left standing in awe and viewing the crudentials of the tandem in a new light!

Websites for Cyclists

There are a growing number of really useful sites for cyclists but THE one for us is Bikehike - its just totally brilliant. Essentially its brilliant because it uses both google and OS maps and so for those of us using bridleways, forest tracks and bike paths as well as roads we have the best of all worlds. Google has its limits when things go off road.
What's even more brilliant is that I found it cruising around another website that I love - slowcoast
These are two very special sites!

Historic Kent

 Organisers of Kent’s most popular community festival have announced that the 2011 Whitstable Oyster Festival will take place between July 23rd and 29th. In recent years organisers have more than doubled the amount of events within the festival, broadening its appeal and enticing more people to the picturesque Kentish town. The entire festival is still structured around the traditional local customs of the oyster fishing industry but the event now includes family and arts entertainment, and food and drink alongside local heritage and history. As a result, Whitstable’s Oyster Festival has become a major tourist attraction, bringing many thousands of visitors to Whitstable each year. Whistable is passed on many of our tours including Historic Kent which journeys from Dover to Canterbury. Old maritime ports, mining villages and the stunning Kent countryside are all en route.

The Royal Shakespeare Theatre Stratford on Avon Opens

Yesterday, the new Shakespeare Theatre finally opened its doors after a £112 million massive refurbishment. The new thrust stage will bring the audience closer to the action although some critics have their reservations about sight lines.

Perhaps the most dramatic change is the 36 metre tower with its viewing platform giving you a vista over 4 counties. And while you're up there you can enjoy the rooftop restaurant which wraps around this new Stratford town landmark. Food is served all day and both the restuarant and tower are open to all.

Public booking for the new season's performances starts January 28 with King Lear opening on February 23.  Book our Cotswold Highlights walking tour or our Cotswolds and Stratford gentle cycling holiday and you can enjoy the new theatre experience for yourself.

Britain by Bike on BBC4

Last night BBC4 started a new series with Clare Balding setting out on a two-wheel odyssey to re-discover Britain from the saddle of her bike.
In a six-part series, Clare will follow the wheeltracks of compulsive cyclist and author Harold Briercliffe whose evocative guide books of the late 1940s lovingly describe by-passed Britain - a world of unspoiled villages, cycle touring clubs and sunny B roads.
Carrying a set of Harold's Cycling Touring Guides for company, Clare embarks on six iconic cycle rides to try and find the world he described.

Her first journey was to the rugged and beautiful Atlantic coast of north Devon - from Lynmouth, scene of Britain's worst flood disaster in the early 1950s, to Ilfracombe via Little Switzerland, and a hidden silver mine whose riches probably helped England win the Battle of Agincourt. En route she met  two men setting out on a tour from Ilfracombe to Plymouth which we feature as our Devon Coast to Coast tour. It is traditional to dip your front wheel in the sea at both ends of the journey for good luck.

It looks like this is going to be excellent viewing for those who love cycling so we shall be hooked!

The Exe Estuary

I was exploring the Exe estuary this weekend and staying in Topsham. This is a fascinating, small and immensely charactful Devon town and a great base from which to enjoy this scenic waterscape. There is some great traffic - free, pretty flat cycling up and down both sides of the estuary, with a good cycle hire company in Tosham itself. I opted for some green laning nearby in my son's 30 year old Land Rover. That was marginally warmer than a 2 wheel cycle experience but a lot more muddy - his heaven but a Capital Sport gentle cycling nightmare!

Image by Maurice Budden

Stonehenge and The Avenue

I was recently in the Stonehenge area looking at cycling routes and walks. Once Sustrans finishes its route there, we will have the the pleasure of cycling to this amazing feature without encountering main roads.
I'd read recently about The Avenue - but was completely unprepared when I came across it! The sheer scale and geography are quite amazing. This grand, curving, earthwork road is almost 2 miles long and forms a processional walk from the River Avon up to Stonehenge. Such is its geography that as you follow it, the henge comes dramatically into view on the horizon. Its as gob smacking as the revealing of the grandest opera set. Suddenly it becomes clear that Stonehenge is a lot more than a collection of stones - its a huge, stage managed landscape created some 3,000 plus BC years ago.

There's much about this landscape that is still not understood but visit if you can and enjoy the full production.

The Avenue features on OS maps and is part of the Stonehenge and Avebury Unesco World heritage Site