Angels on the ceiling

I need an early start, to get to Sheffield in time for a morning service. So I’m loading the bike while the kitchen is making me a huge bowl of porridge. It’s a blustery day, and threatening rain. I’ve cycled a whole week without any rain at all, so I can’t complain if today is wet.

Wakefield’s Premier Inn is on an industrial estate which is like a graveyard on a Sunday morning. And there’s something about biking through residential areas where all the curtains are drawn, and only the determined dog walkers are about.

Too soon, before the leg muscles have quite woken up, there’s a 300ft climb. The GPS says it’s the first climb of ten. It knows how to be encouraging.

There are old and nearly illegible milestones. I’m 800ft higher than I started. Beautiful avenues of trees are protecting me from the worst of the wind. And the rain has mostly held off. Every day should be like this.

Past Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough Stadium, and up a steep little hill to the cathedral. Wait for the tram before crossing the road.

The service is under way already – start time was half an hour earlier than I thought – and there’s quite a large and happy congregation in the bright space. The welcoming verger insists I need coffee before I join the service, and he’s not wrong.

Like so many of the northern cathedrals, Sheffield’s was a parish church for centuries. It became a cathedral in 1914, since when it has acquired a new – and enormous – military chapel, a magnificent glass and wood lantern, a 1960s “narthex” housing a tasteful shop, a nice cafe (see above), lots and lots of beautiful sculpted steel, and – best of all – eight golden angels in the roof.

The Meditation is due to be played when things have calmed down after the service, but it is accompanied from beginning to end by loud washing up, amplified by the cathedral’s stone curves.

Afterwards there’s almost a parade of cellists introducing themselves. First Jeremy, one of the original, iconic and inspirational Extreme Cellists. The Extreme Cellists – there are three of them – once performed the astonishing feat of touring all 42 cathedrals, playing not safely in the nave as I do, but on the cathedral roofs. I’m honoured to meet him.

Then Jessica, a professional from Cambridge, visiting her son in Sheffield, whose eyes widened at the thought of playing all six Bach Sarabandes in one go.

Then James, the cathedral organist, preparing what looks like an organ competition for under-12s – who can play it loudest, and things like that – who says his first instrument, and his first love, is the cello.

Sheffield is the city of steel, and there are beautiful steel sculptures everywhere. If you thought steel was just rude and structural you need to come to Sheffield and see its magnificent delicacy.

They told me about the Sheffield Food Festival, so I walked a short way up the street and bought pakora from Adnan, a Punjabi Muslim who said all their food was cooked by his mum. Lunch wouldn’t be complete without chocolate brownie, wandering through the crowds and listening to Reggae in the sunshine.

Twenty miles further on, about tea time, and thinking the day’s excitements must be over, I’m hailed by a group of women gathered around a wheelbarrow full of peonies. Ruth detaches herself from the small crowd, and runs her barrow across the road to offer me a cup of tea.