Coast to coast cycle ride

"One should always have a definite objective in a walk; as in life, it is so much more satisfying to reach a target by personal effort than to wander aimlessly," wrote Alfred Wainwright in the introduction to his famous A Coast to Coast Walk.

The curmudgeonly old boy had a point - with the possible exception of John O'Groats to Land's End, no other British journey can excite such a sense of achievement and romanticism as the C2C, which crosses northern England at its highest and most beautiful, from St Bees on the Irish Sea to Robin Hoods Bay on the North Sea.

But then Wainwright never had to cart a mountain bike over the towering jagged peaks of the Lake District and peat bogs of the North York Moors.

Each year tens of thousands of walkers complete the C2C, as well as up to 15,000 cyclists on Sustrans' well signposted route slightly further north of the path (c2c-guide.co.uk). We - or rather my much fitter and more organised friends - were well into the planning stage before I realised that we wouldn't be doing the Sustrans' long-distance route that allows for long lunches at country inns and plenty of time in the pub each evening.

The objective of our five-day slog was to stay off-road as much as possible, following or staying close to Wainwright's route. As well as cycling, this meant pushing and occasionally carrying our bikes on rocky bridleways, some of which are in such bad repair they looked like they haven't seen a horse since the time of Dick Turpin. Some days we didn't go anywhere near a village, let alone a pub, all day - lunch consisted of energy bars washed down with litres of isotonic drinks, scoffed on the move.

The first day's ride from St Bees - where we ceremoniously baptised our back wheels in the Irish Sea - to Rosthwaite in the heart of the Lake District was fairly painless apart from a final road climb of Tour de France proportions up Honister Pass from Buttermere.

It was on the second day that we discovered our maker obviously didn't really have mountain bikers in mind when he created the Lake District. In many parts the terrain is far too steep and rocky to cycle, which meant lugging our bikes 1,700ft half way up up Helvellyn - its beauty lost on me as, head down, I pushed and puffed my way to the top. Even coming down the other side towards Ullswater the bridleway was so uneven we couldn't get back on the bikes and freewheel.

That evening we arrived in the village of Shap ("It's half shit and half crap," one local told us) in the driving rain, exhausted.

But the pay-off for such a Herculean effort is the solitude and epic scenery we enjoyed for the whole five days. Most of the ride takes place within three national parks (the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors) and crosses the finest scenery in England - Lakeland fells, the Pennine Uplands, Cleveland Hills, windswept moorland and mile upon mile of verdant dales dotted with sheep and meandering dry stonewalls as far as the eye could see.

After the first two days the terrain became much more bike-friendly and we managed to stay in the saddle most of the time, and the off-road sections were fantastic fun. As we bombed downhill, bounced over the moors and were splattered with mud, I felt like a 10-year-old with a new toy.

There is plenty of decent accommodation en route. We stayed in a mixture of hostels and pubs, including the cracking Tan Hill Inn (tanhillinn.co.uk), which sits at the crossroads of the C2C and the Pennine Way on top of the Yorkshire Dales and, at 1,732ft, claims to be the highest pub in England.

We didn't stick slavishly to Wainwright's original path but followed his advice and mapped our own route, something he urged his readers to try.

Whichever way you go you'll need good map-reading skills, although specialist companies like the Coast to Coast Packhorse can help plan your route and also book accommodation and arrange transfers. We used their door-to-door baggage transfer; each morning a driver picked up our bags and delivered them to the next guesthouse or hostel before our arrival that afternoon.

The trip was formidable enough without lugging panniers over the hills, although in the Tan Hill Inn we met two superhumans who were carrying their own bags, including a tent, and cycling the whole trip in just four days. Don't even think about it . . .
Gavin McOwan

· Further information on the Coast to Coast Packhorse website (cumbria.com/packhorse) and in The Coast-to-coast Mountain Bike Route Pack by Tim Woodcock, £6.99.

Sail round Britain

In the time it takes to circumnavigate Blighty's fringes you could have crossed the Atlantic and back several times, but this 12-week voyage is the definitive exploration of the UK coastline. Plain Sailing's 2,500-mile Round Britain Experience includes 60 stop-offs, Yachtmaster-standard tuition and the opportunity to earn a RYA Coastal Skipper. Starting from St Katharine Docks under Tower Bridge, you sail to Devon, the Scillies, north Cornwall, Dublin, the Menai Strait, Isle of Man, Belfast Lough, Mull of Kintyre, the Scottish Islands, Shetland, Edinburgh and back down the east coast to Tower Bridge. If the thought of living in close quarters with your shipmates for that long brings on a wave of seasickness, opt for a leg of a week or two.

· 01803 853 843, plainsailing.co.uk. £650 per week including all fees, food and cabin accommodation.

Hike the Welsh 3000s

Similar to the Scottish Munros, but easier to tick off in a short space of time, the Welsh 3000 challenge involves conquering the 15 peaks of 3,000ft or more that crown Wales's craggy bonce. It's a hard slog over three days, starting below Aber Falls, ticking off seven on the first day then spending a night in the Ogwen Valley. The second day involves a scramble up Bristly Ridge, five peaks and stopover in Nant Peris, and the grand finale on the last day is Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa), at 3,560ft. A trip with Wandering Aengus Treks includes two much-needed warm-up days, so lasts five nights, with accommodation in inns and guest houses, most meals and guiding.

· 01697 478 443, wanderingaengustreks.com, £545pp, next departure August 21.

Dive Scapa Flow, Orkneys

With a distinct lack of kaleidoscopic coral reefs off our coastline, Britain's best Scuba-diving adventures explore the slimy shipwrecks beneath the waves. The ultimate is the stretch of water called Scapa Flow, in the Orkneys, where a German High Seas fleet, including seven large warships and four destroyers, met a watery end during the first world war. Marine life moved in, and nearby there's great cliff, rock stack and cave diving. Even novices can dive sections of the wrecks. Scapa Scuba in Stromness has a half-day one-to-one course for beginners for £70, or a four-day PADI Open Water group course from £425pp. Stay across the causeway from the mainland on South Ronaldsay, where The Creel in St Margaret's Hope is known as one of Scotland's best restaurants, serving unusual fish species - wolf-fish, sea-witch and torsk - plus hand-dived scallops, seaweed-fed lamb and Orkney beef.

· 01856 851 218, scapascuba.co.uk. The Creel (01856 831 311, thecreel.co.uk) has doubles from £105 B&B.

Canoe the Severn

Herons, dragonflies, swans and otters will be your buddies on a peaceful adventure along the Severn, where you'll pass estates and medieval manors' fish weirs, designed to trap migrating eels and salmon. Public access gives everyone the right to navigate from Pool Quay near Welshpool to Stourport (85 miles) without a licence, and beginners will probably travel 10-15 miles a day, though you could do shorter sections, such as Shrewsbury to Ironbridge.

· severnway.com. Backwaters (07815 542 775, backwatershire.co.uk) hires canoes supplied with tents, stoves, sleeping mats and waterproof containers, and can advise where to camp. Several start and finish points available. Open canoe from £35 per day, tent from £5 per day.

Ride the Mendips

A week spent riding around Somerset includes long hacks into Rowberry Forest and the Mendips of around five hours per day, lessons in jumping, dressage or whichever skills need a gee-up, and sightseeing to Cheddar, Bath, Bristol, Weston-super-Mare, with plenty of pub time in between. The holidays are run from Shipham village, where there's bright, modern self-catering apartment accommodation in Stable Loft, above the stables.

· From £265 per week for apartment sleeping six, riding course from £250pp per week. holidaylettings.co.uk.

Cycle the Hebrides

Nowhere else in the UK can you traverse several islands, pedalling past white shell beaches, mountains, blue lochs, medieval towers, crofters' cottages and pubs as cosy as a lambswool sweater. Starting with a ferry to Stornoway from Ullapool you can easily cover the six major islands, which are linked by causeways, within a week, staying in campsites, B&Bs or hotels.

· cyclehebrides.com has everything you need to know. Ferry crossing £15.30pp single, bike £2.30, calmac.co.uk.

Swim the Cam

Follow in the foot-splashes of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group, who swam naked at Byron's Pool at midnight and practised belly-flops in the Cam. The river has many pretty quarters and swim holes next to meadows. Lord Byron dipped at the confluence of the Granta and Rhee sections, near Trumpington.

· See outdoorswimmingsociety.com for details. Hotel Felix, Cambridge (01223 277977, hotelfelix.co.uk), doubles from £171 B&B.

Via Ferrata, Lake District

Last May, Honister Slate Mine in Borrowdale launched England's first Via Ferrata - a series of steel ladders and bridges that originated in the Dolomites - following a Victorian miners' route along the cliffs to the summit of Fleetwith Pike, at 2,126ft. That was the easy version. A new, white-knuckle route opens this week, featuring rows of iron rung hand and footholds drilled into the rockface and a long zip-line between two cliff faces. The owner of the mine has opened some self-catering cottages with garden hot-tubs on the edge of Loweswater.

· Day pass to mine, including Via Ferrata and zip-line, £31.70 per adult. honister-slate-mine.co.uk. Cottage £800 for three days, sleeping four, including food hamper, luxuryselfcateringcottage.com. Or rooms at the Scafell Hotel from £102 per night, scafell.co.uk.

Bungee jump, Cleveland

Middlesborough's Transporter Bridge is the only bridge in the UK where you can bungee-jump off, plunging 200ft head first towards the Tees. The scenery isn't quite as eye-popping as the event itself - a grey river, the murky depths of the city's industrial backwaters and the A66 - but the
thrill will be no less visceral than if you were leaping from South Africa's Bloukrans Bridge.

· Book through experiencemad.co.uk, from £60pp. Stay at the Crathorne Hall Hotel (0845 458 0901, handpicked.co.uk) in nearby Yarm, with a two AA Rosette dining room and 15 acres of gardens. Doubles from £125 pn B&B.