Diocese of York / News & events / News

Help care for Yorkshire’s churches with your weekend walk or bike ride on the 10th September; visit unique historic buildings, see beautiful countryside, get some exercise and have fun with the family!

Taking place on the first-ever Yorkshire Churches Day, Ride & Stride for churches is a sponsored bike ride or walk between churches, exploring and enjoying the towns and countryside of Yorkshire. The money raised helps to repair churches, chapels and meeting houses throughout Yorkshire.

Ride & Stride is an England-wide event, run by the National Churches Trust, for which people get sponsored to visit as many places of worship as they can in one day, by bike, on foot or by car.

Yorkshire Churches Day is run by Yorkshire Historic Churches Trust (YHCT) in partnership with the Heritage Open Days initiative, England’s largest festival of history and culture.

Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York and YHCT president, described Yorkshire Churches Day as “a wonderful opportunity to share many of our county’s beautiful churches”.

“At the heart of many of our communities sits the parish church; there to welcome everyone,” he said. “These are rightly centres of community, places to gather, learn, serve, places where we mourn and where we celebrate and places where week by week the good news of Jesus Christ is shared.

“However you engage with our wonderful churches, remember that they are not merely places of heritage and history, but rather vibrant and living places of worship and community. I’m so grateful to the Yorkshire Historic Churches Trust for this initiative and for the many ways in which they support and encourage those who work so hard to care for these buildings.”

Rather than Riding or Striding between sites, some churches and people hold a fundraising event to raise money for the YHCT; please do consider this if you can’t take part traditionally.
'Churches and Chapels On the Air' (CHOTA) is a national amateur radio event taking place on the same day, 10th September: several churches around the UK will have amateur radio stations making contact with churches taking part in CHOTA and other radio amateurs. For more information on CHOTA please contact John Wresdell, Churchwarden at St Martin's, Lowthorpe, near Driffield on jhwresdell@gmail.com.

All the information you need to take part in Ride & Stride:

www.yhct.org.uk