Starting on Monday 3rd June — that would be the UN’s World Bicycle Day, then! — I’m setting off from my home in Newcastle for a short ride to Hexham. And then I’ll keep going. Until Inverness.

That’s the first part of a three month, 4,500-mile trip around the best (soggiest?) bits of Britain. Why? I’ve got a book to research. A book of 52 of the best day rides in Britain. And you can follow my progress on this bike blog.

I’ll be posting updates of the rides between the loops. The loops are the day rides I’ve curated. However, I won’t be sharing info on those until the book is out next year.

You can keep tabs on me in the Follow my progress section. That clever chap James Houston has written code that grabs my Strava uploads and populates a moving map with my on-the-ground progress between loops. But that’s for later, when I start moving. Here, for now, is an animation of my route from Newcastle to Inverness, and back to Newcastle on the train: