Cycling UK Forum

Just to echo what others have said - Regional Route 44 from Worcester to Pershore is luvverly. The proposed Sustrans/Worcestershire County Council route from Pershore to Evesham does indeed go via Elmley Castle and Hinton. Both are planned to form part of the Cotswold Line Cycle Route but more of that anon.

When did you last look at the Sustrans online maps? They launched a new site yesterday and the maps are much better now.

I'm not sure how many miles of NCN I've cycled now but I'd guess 1500+. That and the fact I've now volunteered as a Ranger should show how much I like them! Some of the long-distance rides are the finest cycling I've done - especially Lon Las Cymru (National Route and the Pennine Cycleway (Route 68).

By and large it won't always be the most direct route; there are A roads for that. NCN routes through suburbs can sometimes be a bit uninspiring but there are many superb sections in both city centres and the countryside.

I would very strongly recommend you consider Route 68 for the second half of your journey, from the Burton-on-Trent/Derby area. It's a superb ride; if you search this forum for 'Pennine Cycleway' you'll see various postings from people who've done it, giving advice on the various sections. One of the real pleasures is that it does have a long length of railway trackbed, the Tissington Trail, but this is generally above the surrounding countryside - so the views are great.

It might be worth considering Regional Route 70 from near Buckingham to near Leicester, then making your own route from there to Burton. RR70 is a very pleasant route on quiet lanes through the South Midlands.

I cycled Machynlleth-Corris-Aberllefenni-Dolgellau and Dolgellau-Barmouth-Harlech-Porthmadog when I cycled Lon Las Cymru a few years back. Last weekend, Anna and I returned and did the alternative route: Machynlleth-Tywyn-(Black Road)-Dolgellau and Dolgellau-Coed y Brenin-Trawsfynydd-Porthmadog.

For the southern legs:

Aberllefenni is the steepest long hill I've yet encountered on the NCN. The surface is generally good and the ride is very enjoyable, but you'll have to push unless you're superhuman. After that it's an enjoyable meander through farms into Dolgellau.

The Black Road is less steep (we didn't dismount) but still bloody hard work. The surface on the descent is much rougher: we both have Ridgeback hybrids and I was happy with it, though cautious, but Anna judged it prudent to dismount in places. The views on this route are generally better, I think; 'Happy Valley' (awww) and the Dyfynni Valley are both stereotypically picturesque, Bird Rock is enjoyably bizarre, and the views from the top over the sea are quite something. We were pleasantly surprised how many other cyclists we saw on this section, particularly tackling the Black Road.

Northern leg:

The route via Barmouth goes along the Mawddach Trail, an enjoyable railway trail though I encountered a rotten headwind going that way. The Barmouth Bridge is good fun. The coastal A-road wouldn't be much fun in the summer but I found it innocuous enough in early spring, and the minor roads over the hills were very pleasant, though I did occasionally think "why am I heaving up this hill when there's a nice flat coast road down there?". Surface is either gravel on the Mawddach Trail or tarmaced roads, so any bike can cope.

Via Coed-y-Brenin - well, that's something else. Lovely minor roads for the first bit, then well-maintained forest tracks... then you get to Sarn Helen. (The 2003 LLC map diverts you onto the eastern bank of the river earlier, but that's not what's signposted any more.) Sarn Helen is thoroughly spectacular but rough. The very top bit, in my opinion, is utterly uncyclable unless you're an MTB hardnut. The signs also give out at this point so you'll probably have a few flutters of "is this really where I'm meant to be?". It is worth it for the superb descent into Trawsfynydd but definitely be prepared to push over the top.

Then you have a final killer of a hill past Tan-y-Bwlch, but another cracking descent! Sadly the back road into Penrhyndeudraeth has one too many gates to get a decent speed up.

The Garmin Nuvi 550 is designed to work both on your bike and in the car. (I've not used one - an eTrex Legend HCx does me fine on the bike and I don't need one in the car.)

Depending on what sort of cycling you do, and where you are, you may find that OpenStreetMap's free maps for Garmin units are more than enough for your needs - they have lots of paths and tracks marked in well-mapped areas. There's an extensive discussion at yacf.co.uk (in the specialist GPS forum) if you're interested.

If it's any consolation, it's not just cyclists he hates. He wrote an equally under-informed rant the other year about diesel taxation on boats. The facts that a) boaters already pay £500 licence fee to use the waterways, b) Boats Can't Actually Go On The Road, seem to have escaped him.

Still, the Caravan Club has always had a bit of the Daily Mail about it. One of their conditions of membership is that your caravan's "appearance and colour are appropriate and do not offend public opinion". I'd like to join just to get thrown out on those grounds.

My goodness me, that's one of the most unhinged blog posts I've ever read.

Where do I start? It's a hard choice, but I think this is the best bit.

"I rang up Sustrans' Oxford office and volunteered to work toward a continuous high quality pathway along the entire Kennet and Avon from London to Bristol, potentially the first long distance completely off-road cycleway in the UK."

Mr Hart, you are a complete and utter fruitcake. There is no way, at all, you would ever have a chance of getting a "high-quality pathway along the entire Kennet & Avon". There are, believe it or not, other users out there. Boaters, walkers, anglers. They would rather the K&A towpath, built between the 1720s and 1800s and restored with £30m of Heritage Lottery money (oh, and 40 years of volunteer labour), wasn't turned into a tarmac highway throughout. They might, actually, have a point. I'm awfully sorry to be the one to break this news to you.

He asks "how many times has someone with a good idea for a new cycle path contacted Sustrans and received this kind of response?". Well, our local cycle campaign group has only tried it once so far. Sustrans have been really keen to help and have organised a meeting with all the relevant regional staff. Given that this support is coming out of the Oxford office so dismissively referred to by Mr Hart, you will understand my scepticism about his claims.

The bit about the busway proposal for a Bristol-Bath path is a magnificent piece of selective quoting. He claims that Sustrans went "on record in the Evening Post saying essentially that they had 'no comment' about the plans". And he links to the EP article, either in a rather flamboyant attempt to hope people will take his claims on trust, or (more likely, I suspect) because he is so wound up with his own rhetoric he Hasn't Actually Read The Article.

What they actually said, as anyone who does click through can see, was "we are seeking clarity on the exact proposals from the West of England Partnership so we can base any action we take on the full facts". I read that as "we want to know what's happening before we respond". I realise that being in possession of the full facts before rushing to judgement isn't exactly Mr Hart's style, but still.

Interesting - thanks. Must have missed the turn (or maybe it was closed, it was about 4pm).

I was actually only "scouting" this bit of route for OpenCycleMap: we'd done Carmarthen-Fishguard-Carmarthen the other year, and Swansea-Carmarthen that day, which meant we'd missed out a tiny bit in the middle.

You mentioned earlier being part of a signing ride from Llanelli to Swansea - the signs there were great. Any plans to do Carmarthen to Llanelli at any time? Pembrey Forest could do with some more signage!

The whole of NCN route 4 - from London to Fishguard - is now mapped on OpenCycleMap with only one or two gaps of a hundred metres or so... and in at least one of those cases, in Newport, the route actually doesn't exist!

Anna and I cycled the last two bits we'd not done (Swansea-Carmarthen and Pontypridd-Newport) the other weekend. Both very enjoyable.

Meic - do you know what happens to route 4 in Carmarthen, by the new Tesco? The path seemed to stop at an impassable gate into a bunch of allotments. (Though I understand that it'll be rerouted as part of the Connect2 scheme anyway.)

I posted some comments about the surface back in http://forum.ctc.org.uk/viewtopic.php?t=15834 . I believe the coach road (easily the muddiest bit, impassable even for a hybrid when I did it) has now been upgraded. The idea of taking route 42 between Glasbury/Hay and Chepstow (in preference to the Taff Trail) is a good one for a road bike.

Agreed about the mid-Wales bit - one of my favourite sections of the NCN.

These use OpenStreetMap data and the good news is that OSM programmers have just worked out how to do auto-routing on Garmin units.

As yet I don't believe there are any downloads that combine the cycle-specific data (like the files on the Mapomatic site) with the auto-routing, but it'll only be a matter of time.

Looks good, though I do worry that there are far too many of these "upload your routes" sites around.

Why not offer OpenCycleMap tiles as an option rather than limiting people to dreary old Google cartography?

GeoffL wrote:...there seems to be a short unfinished stretch at Conwy to mar a west-coast NCN route and the route through the Marches is almost entirely in the proposed stage.

The Marches route (44) is open from Leominster to Shrewsbury now and I assume will be shown as such on the 2009 map. Shropshire County Council do a free map you can download. You'd have to make your own way from Hereford to Shrewsbury, but you can usually trace proposed routes on the Sustrans online mapping if you zoom out a bit, and in rural areas they'll mostly be country lanes anyway!

That said, I found an open, signposted route today (48 in the Wreake Valley, Leicestershire) which is still shown as "proposed" even on the online mapping.

dodger wrote:I had to carry my bike for about quarter of a mile, so goodbye Sustrans off-road routes in future.

Yeah, I had a bad experience at a roundabout yesterday, so goodbye roads - I'm cycling on the pavement from now on!

Seriously, there are some bad stretches, but I could probably only name two or three sections in 2,000 miles of NCN cycled: the bit out of Alwinton on the Pennine Cycleway, the forest road along the Wye Valley on Lon Las Cymru (and I believe that's been upgraded now), a bit of NCN 5 north of Banbury, and that's all that springs to mind.

Away from the NCN I actually quite like finding random bridleways/byways and seeing how cyclable they are. SWMBO doesn't like getting so muddy though, so I have to pronounce innocence along the lines of "oh, I wasn't expecting that, it looked fine on the map" etc.

Could you perhaps scan a little example, or point us to one on the web? I'm always interested in cycle cartography...