Closed Roads

[gloomyandy]

In my part of the world (West Yorkshire), we seem to have a lot of these at the moment. My cycling group has a joke that no ride is complete without one these days. Now on a day ride I love them. We pretty much always ignore the signs and nearly always can get through (often without even having to walk the bike at all). They usually mean a very quiet road, sometimes miles and miles of it.

However on tour things can be a little different. A few years ago in Scotland I managed to misread several road signs that were warning me about a closed road (the A861 from Lochailort to Acharacle), which was very much closed when I got to the actual road works. In this case I was lucky and only had to wait for 2 hours for it to reopen and it was a nice day, but if I'd had to turn back that would have meant something like a 40 mile return trip plus who knows how far for a diversion. Even walking a loaded bike for any distance can be tricky.

I'm interested in what you do if you some across a "road closed" sign on tour, also do you check for possible closures when planning a route (I typically don't, maybe I should!).

[Tigerbiten]

I think it comes down to the type of tour you're on.

If you've two weeks to cover around 1k miles then you've probably got the whole full route planned out, so most long term blockages will be known ahead of time.
If you're going to be out for 5 months and cover +5k miles, then you tend to make the route up as you go along so a 100 miles diversion is just another couple of days cycling.

As for short term blockages then it comes down to power.
With a lot of power then it easy to get online to finalize the next days route, so you can find it then if you look.
With minimal power usage you're going to be working off paper maps and will only know about the blockage when you find it.

Luck ........

[mjr]

It depends. On one day of this week's fake tour, we hit three closures. One was at about 1030 and the alternative was obvious so we took it, rather than try to pass and risk a 2 mile backtrack to the detour. The next at 1300 had an obvious detour but we went to look at the closure because it was not far and no work was happening and it was short, so we pushed around it. The final at 1800 was not properly signed and it looked like work had finished with the signs not yet removed, so we rode through.

I don't generally check for closures when planning, only really noting the ones big/long enough that they get marked on openstreetmap.org - we can usually cope with most things, but I do wish someone enforced making them leave a way through for cycles, or signpost good cycling diversions as well as the current HGV ones.

[cycle tramp]

Any planned closures should be advertised here, together with details;
https://one.network/uk
It should also should any traffic delays and when the police report them through any major collisions. It's quite a useful tool.

[gloomyandy]

That looks pretty handy, I wonder if any of the planning apps (like cycle.travel) have any sort of integration with it?

[gbnz]

I'm interested in what you do if you some across a "road closed" sign on tour, also do you check for possible closures when planning a route (I typically don't, maybe I should!).

I don't plan, simply tend to go. Todays ride is typical (Nb. Not on a tour), but came across a road closed, road slipping into the river. Road "closed". Man shouting at me, "You ignora.........", two men for some reason on a high lift platform "he doesn't care".

End of the day I disrupted works for approx. 15-20 seconds, there was minimal risk to me to the 3-4 men on site. So I cycled through. The road closed essentially consisted of a road I've known for decades, it if had ceased to exist, walking through a field of sheep would have been an option

[Mike Sales]

On a club run close to Rhiw on the Lleyn we came across a road closed sign.
Of course we carried on and we came to a place where the tarmac had been nibbled away by a landslide down towards Porth Neigwl (otherwise called Hell's Mouth).
There was enough road left to shuffle by, though it was most certainly impassable on four wheels.
Was there not a similar situation on Mam Tor? I have a hazy memory of pushing on through a road corrugated and eaten away and so signed impassable.

[foxyrider]

On a club run close to Rhiw on the Lleyn we came across a road closed sign.
Of course we carried on and we came to a place where the tarmac had been nibbled away by a landslide down towards Porth Neigwl (otherwise called Hell's Mouth).
There was enough road left to shuffle by, though it was most certainly impassable on four wheels.
Was there not a similar situation on Mam Tor? I have a hazy memory of pushing on through a road corrugated and eaten away and so signed impassable.

Mam Tor has been closed for decades although with care you can still get a bike through - just not easily!

[Mike Sales]

Mam Tor has been closed for decades although with care you can still get a bike through - just not easily!

Thanks. I guess that the instability of the Shivering Mountain makes rebuilding the road infeasible.

[ossie]

There's usually room to squeeze by on roads.. I came across one in the South of France, explained I was cycling to England and they happily let me through. In others I've just 'winged it '. The low ballers are often on canal or river paths here or abroad ...its closed for a reason and that's usually because a bicycle or pedestrian won't fit through / around or over.

[millimole]

I pulled a fast one many years ago - barriers right across the road and no obvious detour, so I squeezed past the barrier, pushed the bike for the length of the closure, which was considerable, but no obvious reason. Igot to the far end and met a red faced angry workman - "your mate down there said it was OK for me to come through as long as I walked". At which he stormed off to where I'd come from.
I don't know who got it in the neck, and I know I wouldn't have the ballz to do it today!

[iandriver]

Seems to be debate about whether a road closed sign applies to anything but motor vehicles. Road closed to cycles and pedestrians also would be a help, assuming it genuinely needs to be. Most the road closed signed I come across, I simply get off and walk at the pedestrian access.

[Pebble]

I wish they would make it clear when a road is closed if pedestrians cyclist can still get through - some diversions can be 10s of miles and included trunk roads!
I always just cycle up to the road closed, nearly always get through, once a jobsworth on the council would not let me through so I bypassed it by climbing into the field. He told me I wasn't allowed to do that - I gave him a cheery wave.
Another time I thought I would squeeze through and when I got there they had completely removed the bridge - I lost that time. LOL

[eileithyia]

I wish they would make it clear when a road is closed if pedestrians cyclist can still get through - some diversions can be 10s of miles and included trunk roads!
I always just cycle up to the road closed, nearly always get through, once a jobsworth on the council would not let me through so I bypassed it by climbing into the field. He told me I wasn't allowed to do that - I gave him a cheery wave.
Another time I thought I would squeeze through and when I got there they had completely removed the bridge - I lost that time. LOL

Indeed, we did have a recent road closed so we carried on regardless, only to get to a second sign that said Road closed inc cyclists and walkers, by then we had already arrived at the closure.... so much easier if it had been at the junction.

Many years ago, in order to get back to our campsite one evening; tandem with child stoker, we went through a road closed sign on the basis that cyclists can usually get through, only to find (once nearer the far end of the lane and a long detour to go back), the road totally disappeared as a new road was being built across the route. We ended up scrambling down the earth bank, across and up the otherside... rather than the 10 miles detour and busy main road we would have had to take.

[willem jongman]

Here in the Netherlands people by and large ignore such signs and road workers know this. This is just the anarchic country that we are. Of course, you may be out of luck: many towns are doing major work on drainage systems, if only to prepare them for the larger quantities of rain water that come with global warming. This is often accompanied by work on new glass fiber networks. The combination may mean that your luck has genuinely run out because the road is now one huge hole.