Bike Route: Giggleswick to Ilkley 30mi 2400ft of climb
Accommodation: Double room in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, private home (Airbnb); host Caroline.
Dinner: The Olive Branch Turkish restaurant, half a block from our room. Mixed grill, salad, and vegetables. Excellent food, nice atmosphere.
The plan was to take it easy, enjoy the day, eat a lot, stop a lot. And we did.
The route was easy, mostly on small country lanes again, with screaming downhills into little stone hamlets and excruciatingly steep uphills onto barren, grassy moors. We found a cafe for tea and scones in the morning, an ice cream shop across from a park with a public toilet in the afternoon. We were on track to arrive in Ilkley on time. And then we spotted Bolton Abbey.
We had not done much research on this area before our trip. In fact, we rarely do much research on any of our trips, beyond route planning and accommodation booking and quick looks through visitor information sites, mostly for our destinations. As a result, we are often surprised by interesting spots that appear during our rides. (And we also often miss superinteresting sites because we didn't plan time for exploring them...)
Anyway, Bolton Abbey was a wonderful surprise, made even more special by the two volunteer guides who shared their time and knowledge with us.
The abbey stop made us a bit late for checking in that evening. I messaged our host as we left the abbey, she was able to check us in a little later than planned, and all worked out just fine.
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| We followed the Way of the Roses Coast-to-Coast national bike route for much of this part of our journey. Four years ago, we completed another part of the Way of the Roses when we traveled from Leeds to Scarborough. |
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| Our volunteer guides had tons of information about the abbey. It was originally a Catholic priory. Henry VIII had all the Catholic churches and monasteries destroyed, everything valuable sold, and all money turned over to him. The abbey had been partially demolished when church leaders realized that the abbey served as the local parish church, not just the Catholic church--and the king agreed to spare the parts that were still standing, as long as they were turned over to the Church of England. |
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| This part of the church, including the timber ceiling, dates to the 13th century. The wall at the end was destroyed in the 1539 Dissolution of the Monasteries, under Henry VIII's reign, then rebuilt after the king halted the destruction. The church is still in use today. |
