This post is a copy of a post written for the TET Facebook Group during the trip itself, posted here entirely unedited. It is the first of three posts aimed at trail riders that talk about my summer 2026 trip to the UK, the final leg of a two year trip around Western Europe. I have also written, or will soon write, posts with less of a trail riding specific focus summarising the UK trip and reflecting on the Europe trip as a whole.
The map above sometimes takes a few seconds to load and move to the right location, please be patient. This post covers the section in the north of England.
Ohkay. I write this one back at home and with a little distance between the trip and the writing. When I last wrote I had spent 10 days or so making my way around the Southwest and up through Wales. On this leg of the journey, I was planning to make a fairly comprehensive loop of Yorkshire and then head on up to my parents in the Scottish Borders. I came out of Wales, found myself unexpectedly in Liverpool and then skipped the flat(er) and more urban bits towards the dales. I re-joined the TET near Lancaster and started on my way east. The first trail I hit was a taste of good things to come, when the TET and the ACT both follow the same route, it is usually an indication of something worthwhile. The Hornby Road starts with a slightly menacing sign, no cars and seemingly also no quads. Essentially, four wheels good, two wheels better, huge fines for bushwacking. Gotcha. It’s mostly a very easy gravel road with a slightly rougher section in the middle. But nothing to cause alarm. It was raining the whole time, so I only have a few phone pictures but it’s the first really long trail this trip where you’re up in the moorland for a long time and a taste of what’s to come in Yorkshire.
The weather got better over the next few days of heading broadly northeast. I found myself really enjoying Yorkshire, the trails are much longer and more substantial than in the Southwest but they’re easier than Wales – so progress is confident and quick. I will skip the detailed descriptions, there are photos below, I hear they speak a thousand words. I was plodding along, riding, eating and camping – slowly beginning to smell increasingly ripe as spare clothes and bathing became more of a distant memory. Neither weather nor water quality make rivers and lakes in the UK seem particularly appealing for a wash. I looked at the map and realised that I was as close as I was going to be to Coldstream and a warm bed, so I made one of the better decisions of the trip and hopped off of the TET, onto the road and made it to my parents just before midnight.
After a very calm, quiet, lazy couple of days talking politics and drinking coffee I had everything cleaned – some of my gear had not seen in the inside of a washing machine since Portugal – and it was time to head off. The TET starts, or of you prefer it ends, just the other side of the river from Coldstream so I decided to follow it for a bit. It was lovely, a totally new perspective on where I grew up. I’ll very probably bring a trail bike up with me next time I visit properly and do the whole “Borderlands” route. But I wanted to get over to the lakes and back into the dales, time wasn’t unlimited and UK prices are not kind on the budget either. So, I set a fairly normal road route and started out, which then bumped back into the TET Borderlands after an hour or so. The TET and I danced our way along the B6318, following the route of Hadrian’s Wall. Now. Context. I grew up in the Scottish Borders. I have always had an interest in Roman history, and I even teach it from time to time at school. I’ve never been to Hadrian’s Wall, despite it being only a short drive from home and an easy day trip. Now, back at home, when people ask me about the trip it’s one of the maybe five sections of the trip that I keep mentioning. It’s a stunning landscape; you can see why Hadrian had it built where it is – no Scottish army is sneaking up on it. Bits of the TET branch off the road to trail sections, noteworthy places and I think I even accidentally found a spot where I was – and I do believe legally – riding on one of two parallel mounds – I assume the path of the wall itself.
Then it was time to head for the Lake District. I really didn’t know what to expect other than lakes and hills. I wasn’t wrong. It has lakes and hills. It’s also got a fabulous TET route. It’s another one that’s on the shortlist of bits of the trip I talk about. I joined the TET between Carlisle and Keswick, heading west – from here you have an easy two day route ahead of you that’s pretty much got it all. Nothing wildly challenging that I can remember, but delightful scenery from moor to coast. The route goes around the outside of the lakes, then cuts into the very heart of it over a hiking trail, does a loop there and then skips back out. There are a few small water crossings, some funny surfaces and some rocky bits. Some lakes too. All very pretty and very doable. It’s a loop I would be happy to take a beginner out on to give them a taste of trail riding and stimulate their appetite for more.
It was then back to the dales for me, aiming for the waypoint I dropped hear Hawes when I made a beeline for my Mum and Dad’s place. This time Yorkshire was blue skies and sunshine, which always helps. My memories up to the Hawes area are hazy. I recall long trails, which I find a joy even if they are fairly straightforward. Panoramic views of valley ends where you can see where the water has formed the landscape as it collects and flows into the rivers. Vivid memories of scrambling my way up a hill, 600 whole meters high – I think an altitude record on this trip – and eating a Belgian bun on the top. It was a bit of a bugger of a climb so I was hopeful the way down would be kinder. It wasn’t. The powers that be had decided the trail needed a bit of surface dressing and dropped a motherload of loose rocks on it. Yes, I know, get up on the pegs and ride it like a man. Less exhausting then plodding, I know. I can do that. But as much as speed makes things easier it does also make the consequences of a mistake worse, so a bit at a time and with a profound lack of elegance I made my way down. In Hawes I met my first trail riders of the trip, from Inverness no less. Then just an hour later saw my first comrades out on the track, but it was a very steep rocky bit so I – being the one going up – got out of their way and we shouted greetings to each other as we passed. Stopping was not in question.
The trails around Hawes are brilliant by the way, scenic and long. I was a little jealous of the lads from Inverness with their B&B and base to ride from. Might do the same myself one day. One trail looks like a glitch in the GPX file when you look at it. Straight as an arrow, like when you go through a tunnel or take a ferry. Nope. It’s just an old roman road, must be a good 10 miles or more of gravel in a straight line – some nice rain runoff bumps if you fancy a jump but my patched together luggage rack precluded anything unnecessarily kinetic.
By this point time was starting to run out, as was my rough budget for the trip. The UK is damned expensive, 18 quid for a pub dinner translates to well over 20 in civilised euros. I’d taken to a strategy of a good lunch, usually in a chippie or a cafe rather than in a pub. Towards the end of the day I would grab myself a meal deal and a beer in the local co-op, so I had something to eat at camp and a small breakfast for the next morning to tide me over until the inevitable bacon roll. Still, pricey. I made my way south through the Peak District but the weather wasn’t as lovely, and my energy levels were dropping. My memories are as good as non-existent. It was pretty, but my capacity for noticing moorland landscapes was starting to decline. I tried to keep to B roads and the TET as much as I could but at some point, I had to get my ass down to Dover. Not because that was my preferred ferry crossing, it wasn’t by far – my van was in Caen and Poole would have been a preference. My grandparents live in Deal. Cue a huge detour. The only sensible way is motorway, even on my little DR. It’s one of the reasons I have huge rear lights on it, because at 50mph in the rain I want the trucks to see me.
The little DR handled the torture like a pro, despite torrential rain. I complained, a lot. After a visit to the elderly ones, it was time to hop across the channel for the trivial matter of 300km on the French motorways, again in driving rain. The trip ended in the car park of a little rural town hall where Vandalf the White was patently waiting to take Poe and I home. The clouds broke just as we were getting to the van, it didn’t rain again all day.
All of which marks the end of an epic trip from Basel to the Algarve and up to Scotland, following the TET. I’ll be writing something about the whole UK section of the trip soon, followed by some kind of summary of the whole two year odyssey. If you got this far, thanks for reading!