Читать книгу The Lancashire Cycleway. The tour and 17 day rides онлайн

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As with any circular route, the first question is where to start. You might settle this by considering whether you would rather get the hilly part out of the way early on, or ease yourself in on the flatter stuff. However, if you are arriving by train, Lancaster is the logical starting place and gives you a fairly gentle introduction, then the major climbs, and finally a long, mostly easy winding-down. It’s also historically appropriate, Lancaster being the traditional county town.

The Lancaster Link, following an old railway line out of the city alongside the River Lune, is a painless opening. You meet the official Cycleway route as you cross the river into Halton, the first of many attractive villages along the way. A short climb lifts you onto a ridge which gives prospects of things to come. You descend to Carnforth, then enter the Arnside and Silverdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the name nearly as long as the area itself: this is the second-smallest mainland AONB.

Intricate and genuinely pretty, it may be small, but clichés about quarts and pint pots are almost irresistible. The often-leafy lanes twist and wriggle, and it would be easy to take a wrong turning, except that there are no wrong turnings here. However, if you follow the route as described, you’ll get only the merest glimpse of the coast. It could be worth taking the short extra loop to Arnside (in Cumbria), which has a Youth Hostel as well as a great outlook over the Kent estuary.