MORE THAN A HUNDRED STORIES

More Than 100 Stories is a commission led by artists Sarah Butler and Nicole Mollet that explores and creatively maps the Creative People and Places programme.

Cycling the ‘Northern Belt’| Week Two: Dewsbury to Hull

30.09.15

So, another week's cycling, this time from Dewsbury to Hull, moving from lush hills and limestone, through coalfields and along waterways to a much flatter landscape, traversed by drainage ditches and scattered with wind farms. Sitting in my hotel room in Doncaster I spoke to a friend in London – 'it's sheeting it down here', she told me as I looked out of the window at a rectangle of clear blue sky. Save for a soggy Monday in Dewsbury, we had only sunshine, beautiful, crisp autumn light, trees tinged red and yellow.

My GPS machine broke over the weekend, so this week we navigated with paper maps, strapped to the handlebars of our bikes. It is less convenient but also, perhaps, a more pleasant experience than following a flashing dot on a screen, Over these two weeks, I have heard again and again the phrase 'we want to put [insert CPP place of your choice] on the map'. There's something about travelling between places on your own steam, something about the long approach maybe, that gives you a sense of ownership of the place. These CPP projects have been my daily destinations, the places that have defined the route I have taken and the things I have seen; they are certainly on my own personal map.

Sarah Butler