Rob Ainsley travels a long way without leaving town

Day rides without going beyond the ring road: Rob Ainsley is loving staying local...

“Cycling is the great ‘reasonable excuse’, as cast-iron as the leather saddle I still can’t break in...”

LAST YEAR, I was cycling from the Med to the Baltic. Now, I’m hardly getting beyond York’s ring road. My event-horizon has shrunk more than lycra in the hot wash.

I’m no fan of virtual riding. No Zwift, no turbo trainer for me. Like fine art on the radio, it’s too removed from the real thing.

So I’m still getting out every day, and loving staying local. I’ve been exploring my patch in microdetail, plundering council leaflets, Ordnance Survey Pathfinders, online maps and PDFs for ideas. Routes that hitherto seemed too muddy, dull, or cumbersome to bother with, are proving enjoyable.

And now I can travel light – no need for a lock, as there’s nowhere I can stop and enter anyway. Actually, forget ‘travelling light’. I take two full panniers. Clearly my subconscious is pretending I’m on a long-haul tour, when I’m only going to see the petrol station with the Daleks on top. Daleks? Yes, and a Cyberman and Darth Vader. Lifesize rooftop models near B&Q. And a bear? There’s a statue, mysteriously in a quiet residential square. York has a menagerie of unexplained full-size statues: a monkey in a monkey puzzle tree; two dozen cats; a red plastic cow; pig weathervanes; a dog territorially marking a badly-parked bicycle on Naburn Bridge.

You want distance without straying far from home playing under Welsh rules? York has three flat, tarmac, bikeable circuits, it transpires. Two I won’t specify, because public access is debatable. (The gate is locked but the fence only goes halfway around, so getting in is easy. A lesson for those considering border walls with Mexico, perhaps.) But one definitely free to use is the three kilometre perimeter road of York racecourse.

I’d never done it before. Perhaps I was put off by the circularity. Now, this seems a big plus. Do a few laps and I get a perfectly even tan by default; do 50, plus the getting there and back, and there’s a 100miler, walkable in theory from my house. So it’s all in order, officer. Obviously I’d go mad doing 50 laps, but less mad than if I stayed indoors.

After the first couple of weeks of my intricately researched jaunts, I knew every lane, path, snicket, over-complex cycle crossing and under-signposted council route. So I added spontaneity. I let the wind determine my path, able to improvise with my new knowledge. Out into it for an hour, back with it, through quiet villages of smiley, retired people – not berating cyclists, but strolling and chatting to neighbours at a max hearing-aid distance.

After five weeks I’d done all the possible day rides and supermarket runs that made sense. And several that didn’t. So I started again, on different bikes. You’re wondering how many bikes I have? Well, puzzles and quizzes have become very popular recently, so try this: the wheel sizes total 116 inches.

Perhaps you’ve had enough puzzles simply trying to follow that disappearing cycle lane, or working out why the Sustrans way to the town centre goes the opposite direction alongside a cement factory. So here’s the answer: it’s five bikes. That should see me through the summer.

Social distancing does not mean being unsociable. More folk than ever are out walking, cycling, jogging, supervising the kids on scooters or balance bikes, or out on family rides. But cycling is the great ‘reasonable excuse’, as cast-iron as the leather saddle I still can’t break in.

So I’d say, forget the trainer. Explore your neighbourhood. Find your own quirky sights to cycle to. In a place as rich in history, in stuff, as Britain, you only have to look. Ask friends and family, email the cycle campaign, download the council leaflets. I guarantee you’ll find inspiration.

And remember, nothing lasts forever. Except, evidently, my rock-hard leather saddle.