Sloping off: York's uphill downhill

York's a pretty flat place - it's said that from the top of the Minster in fine weather, you can see at least eight hen parties - but it does manage to have among its modest slopes a Gravity Hill (right).

In other words, an optical illusion that fools the eye into thinking a downhill is uphill and vice-versa. I blogged about Britain's most famous example, 'Electric Brae' in Ayrshire, last year.

York's own magnetic scarp is on Water End, part of the newly-signed 'orbital cycle route' that circumscribes the city. It's at about 9 o'clock on the orbital, at the junction with Boroughbridge Road in Acomb.

The cyclist in the picture looks like she's going uphill, but in fact she can freewheel: looking away fron the camera the cycle track goes downhill, all the way to the where it joins the road at the top left.

Not that any of York's gradients mattered in yesterday's ferociously high winds. Whatever the local topography, you ended up going north-east, with the gale.

Freewheeling uphill: Scotland's Electric Brae

Cycling in Scotland the other day I took the chance to do some uphill freewheeling near Ayr.

Croy Brae, often nicknamed Electric Brae, is a 'gravity hill' - an optical illusion that fools you into thinking an up slope is a down slope, and that the laws of thermodynamics are being temporarily suspended.

It's on the A719, about seven miles of gentle climb and coastal views south out of Ayr. A sign warns you of slow traffic: lots of cars can't resist the temptation to stop, let off the handbrake, and roll magically against the gradient.


There are several such gravity hills (I featured one in Aston Clinton, near Tring, in my Quirky Bike Rides book). But Electric Brae is the best one to cycle.



The illusion really is astonishing. This stretch of road clearly goes downhill into the trees, doesn't it?

Actually not, as the detailed stone plaque informs you in the lay by. In fact it's a quarter of a mile of 1 in 86 descent the other way, towards the camera.

If you stop on your bike 'down' in the middle of those trees and face towards the camera, you roll 'uphill', reaching a freewheel speed of about 10mph. (Conversely, of course, cycling the other way feels oddly strenuous for a 'downhill'.)


The strangest thing is how the illusion disappears the instant you lower your viewpoint (right), particularly when you're looking through a camera. With the surrounding hills out of your eye line, it's suddenly clear that the slope runs towards you. It's a remarkable demonstration of how subtle, but powerful, the subconscious effect is of the skyline on your mental spirit level.

The Tring Cycle

The Natural History Museum: London! Tring! Yes, the NHM is only half based in posh Kensington. It has another branch in Tring, Herts, 40 minutes north from Euston by train.

We went up there today, bike-and-train being the best way to go and see it from London. Because the museum itself is a couple of miles from the station - too far to walk comfortably, too tedious to do by bus, but too far from London to do by car.

And make no mistake, NHM Tring is no dusty old warehouse of provincial junk. It's got an astounding collection of stuffed mammals, birds and fish that you knew from books but which are amazing when you see them life size in front of you. There's a Scrabble-player's resource list in the bird section alone: ani, shama, coleto, trogon, motmot, piapiac, aracari, gonolek, minivet.

You can see stuffed examples of a Bengal florican, a Wonga pigeon, scaly-breasted lorikeet, Temminck's tragopan, or the splendidly named noisy pitta. The Victorian galleries deafen you with excited kids shouting and running up and down, and mums saying 'Look George, that animal comes from Kenya. We went to Kenya, didn't we?', and dads fretting 'Amber, stop that RIGHT NOW'.

It's great fun. And it has a pair of fleas in costume. And it's all free!

It's a fine day trip from London, and Tring is fun to nose around. As you'd expect from a place that sounds like a Bakelite phone, it has some handsome olde houses and cottages and picturesque back-lanes like Akeman St, the old Roman Road. Get to the town centre from the train station by the signposted roadside cycle path, and go back along the Grand Union Canal (pictures) and drop in on picture-postcard Aldbury, a village a mile east of Tring station.


We did what everyone does when exploring a new town, and consulted the windows of the local estate agents to see how much houses cost. Half a million quid, is the answer, which made us think: Wow! We could sell up in London and come to live here. If someone gave us half a million quid. Except we might be a bit bored by, say, the second day.


But if you do go to Tring, take a side-trip of an hour or so to visit one of England's few magnetic hills: a geographical optical illusion which makes a downhill road look like an uphill road, enabling you to freewheel magically uphill (right). For a few dozen metres, anyway. The physics-bending place is Dancersend Lane outside Aston Clinton just west of Tring, and there's a chapter about it in my book.