The Good Companions

Words by Tom Reynolds, photos by Tom Hill.

This a story of three people, two places and one name. Bradford.

At first glance, the trip itinerary reads like a pointless point-to-point pedal. An out and back in which the start and end were, at first glance, one and the same.

A ride from Bradford to Bradford. A winter loop then?

Keeping it local. Out early, home for lunchtime. That sort of thing.

Look a little closer, scratch the surface a bit more and you’ll see the route was actually a linear journey. An A-B from B-B. Still a local trip of sorts. But one that visited – and encouraged us to explore - two, separate locales.

Hockney to Summerbee.

Kiki Dee to Lowry.

Priestley to rice n’three.

A journey.

With him, you and me.

Last year, me (Tom R) and my friends Tom H and Dave B spent the weekend Riding Home in an early summer heatwave. We started warm and only got warmer, dustier and slightly sunburned as the trails headed east towards the ocean.

Fast forward into the winter of 2024 and the trio was back together but the backdrop was wet and windy Bradford, West Yorkshire - the well-known one that counts British novelist and playwright J.B. Priestley among its famous former residents.

Before Priestley got to work in the writing game with his breakthrough novel The Good Companions (1929) he began his working life in the Bradford wool trade.

Riding through, and chatting about him, and more pertinently, wool, in the northern Bradford suburbs he grew up in felt like an appropriate way to start our A-B ride from B-B.

The tactile world of textiles was to be this journey’s common thread.

Bradford boomed during the Industrial Revolution. Wool was its thing. Woolopolis its nickname.

Meanwhile Bradford, Manchester was doing the same. Just with cotton.

Cottonopolis, imaginatively, its nickname. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Mills dominated – and dominate in some areas still – the landscape around Bradford.

We rode past perhaps the region’s most famous mill – the one Sir Titus Salt opened in the mid 1800s on the Leeds Liverpool Canal.

As we rode slap bang through the high walls of one Salt’s mills, we heard Titus’s tall tale.

Tom H is from these parts, so he was at home explaining how Salt created a village of houses, parks, schools and library around the mill. And called it Saltaire.

Salt and vinegar chips 40km down the trails in Hebden Bridge proved to be our version of Priestley’s magic behind the morning.

On the misty moor, we’d reached for the previous night’s curry leftovers (cold onion bhajis) to keep the wolf from the door.

South Asian immigration is another factor that unites the two Bradfords.

A culinary cross-peninine crossover that we also explored that night with a rice n’three curry, basically a Manc take on a thali, and some post-ride pints.

For now it was chips time. Once they were down, our off-road route along the Pennine Bridleway went up, down and eventually over the last climb proper: Mankinholes.

Before long, with our climbing done for the day and Manchester starting to enter our thoughts we, ironically, descend to a town called Summit.

It’s the high point of the Rochdale Canal and it ushered in the low point of the day.

All rides have their ups and downs.

We began the day full of hope with our heads up.

Happily exploring, explaining and pondering our surroundings.

Chatting, eating and sharing bhajis, Vimto’s and Mike & Ike’s.

We ended it lined out, heads down soddenly splashing our way for the last 30km into England’s second city with one thing on our mind.

Getting to the curry house for a Manc thali.

Rice n’three.

For three.

And, more generally, bringing this ride to an end.

Manchester is my ends. In the last 10 years its skyline has been transformed – a modern-day Residential Revolution. Towering towers taking over. Old mills turned into new builds.

I had visions of riding into my city mirroring telling stories of the changing face of this former city of industry. From Cottonpolis to metropolis. Of how the city's humid, damp climate made it the perfect place for cotton production. How at the peak of its powers, Manchester was the epicentre of an industry that, across the UK, was responsible for 80 percent of the world’s cotton.

But while it was the right place to tell such tales, it was definitely the wrong time.

Not least because you could barely see in front of your face in the sort of rain that comes at you from all sides.

Hoods up, heads down. Sometimes rides just need bringing to a silent, soggy conclusion.

Bradford-Bradford.

Winter 2024.

On paper a pointless point-to-point.

But in practice, a Pennine traverse from wool to cotton.

Exploring people, place and potatoes (fried).

Hockney to Summerbee.

Kiki Dee to Lowry.

Priestley to rice n’three.

A journey.

With him, you and me.

The Good Companions.