Postby robert32asp » 6 Sep 2017, 7:09pm
Just to let everyone know. I did my trip across England as planned.......sort of. I had an absolutely wonderful time. For the most part the weather was great. Toward the end of my trip the rain started to interfere with things, especially the last day from Rochester to Canterbury. I took the train a couple days either because of injury or heavy rain. I logged about 400 miles of saddle time.
I want to thank everyone for their comments and suggestions. It really helped to plan things out. What I did was used TravelAdvisor for the most part to compare accommodations both in advance and on-the-fly. I got a Senior Rail card that allowed me discounts to get from Heathrow airport to Bristol, to reduce the cost of train travel from Norwich to Ipswich, and from about 5 miles past Rochester to Canterbury and then from Canterbury to meet my wife in Oxford.
The cathedrals and churches were great and added a lot to the experience. The best cathedrals for me were Bristol, Ely (a complete surprise), Norwich,and Canterbury. The Avebury stone circle was impressive. People along the way were very helpful when I got lost. I would not do something like this without cell phone mapping and a dedicated GPS.
While I am impressed by the vast National Bike routes, I do think that one needs to have a paper map of the bike routes and ended up buying several. The "marking" of the bike routes is not very consistent and it is very easy to get lost when they don't put up many route markers. I would also say that the maintenance of the national bike routes is kind of hit or miss. Some were well maintained and others I was constantly worried about my safety from being ripped apart by bramble sticker bushes extending out into the trail and/or low hanging branches. I got bonked in the helmet several times by branches as I went down the paths.
I couldn't find a suitable bicycle rental (hire) company. All the ones I contacted required me to pick up and drop off the bike at the same location. When I did the Camino in Spain, there were lots of choices and the rental companies would ship the bike to your starting hotel and then have it picked up at your ending hotel. Ultimately, I purchased a 29er MTB hardtail disk brake bike from Cycle Republic in Bristol that was on a super sale. It worked perfectly. Some of the rental companies advised against an MTB and suggested a hybrid or even a road bike. That would have been a mistake. Several of the paths were very muddy or soft rutted dirt. An MTB was the right choice. Even selling the bike at the end of the ride for just 40 pounds resulted in a net cost that was just a little over the cost of a rental and had I included shipping of the bike back to the pick-up point, buying it was a better deal.
The two worst experiences were: (1) a trail through the fens north of Ely, where I had to lift my bike with loaded panniers up a bunch of stairs to go over a bridge to cross a river. (2) Riding from Rochester toward Canterbury in a rain down pour parallel to an A-Road with bus and trucks spraying water across the sidewalk, trail and onto me.
I think the best experiences were Evensong at the Norwich and Canterbury Cathedrals. The tree covered railroad paths were beautiful and the open roads in various farm country were great. Also the Tilbury ferry was kind of fun.
Last edited by
robert32asp on 7 Sep 2017, 2:33am, edited 1 time in total.