Canal towpaths from London to Manchester or Preston

[Bmblbzzz]

If I had a lot of time available and wanted to see lots of ducks, herons, other watery stuff, I'd say it sounds great. If my aim was to get from London to Manchester or see other stuff, then another route. But it could be fun if not in a hurry.

[Sweep]

It is something I've considered (but not yet got round to attempting). Get a cheap train ticket down to London & then ride back home, following canals as far as possible.

At the risk of a divert, if you wanted to do that, avoiding expense of many train tickets and sheer hassle of bike booking, i'd take london northwestern from crewe to euston. Easy to get £9 fares with little notice, nice bike policy, no booking needed. Not the fastest but nice trains. I have a ridden gox route from bolton to crewe. If interested, pm me.

[RickH]

It is something I've considered (but not yet got round to attempting). Get a cheap train ticket down to London & then ride back home, following canals as far as possible.

At the risk of a divert, if you wanted to do that, avoiding expense of many train tickets and sheer hassle of bike booking, i'd take london northwestern from crewe to euston. Easy to get £9 fares with little notice, nice bike policy, no booking needed. Not the fastest but nice trains. I have a ridden gox route from bolton to crewe. If interested, pm me.

I've almost never found a problem booking a bike on the west coast mainline, and that is just turning up wanting to get on the next train. (I've been heading over to Chester at least once a week for the last 5 years with a bike &, for the first 3, I nearly always did Wigan to either Warrington or Crewe on Virgin to get a connection. I still sometimes do that but, more usually, cycle further & get on a train going direct to Chester.)

Yes £9 is pretty good value but that is from Crewe (I presume you meant gpx route to Crewe)? A quick look earlier (while I was on the train to chester ) gave me direct trains from Wigan (which isn't much further than Bolton) to Euston for under £20 next week (a few under £30 if I wanted to go tomorrow).