Wise Words - Where to Ride?
Words and Pictures: Hugo Gladstone
Riding a bike is a simple business. You get on it, you pedal. Choosing where to ride isn't really rocket science either. A bike is one of the most versatile ways of getting about and potential rides abound. That said, it is easy to overlook one or two options.
Listed below then are some of the more pleasant or interesting types of place you might think about taking your bike. For more specific locations, you may also want to explore the Where to Ride section of this website.
Country Lanes
This may seem obvious but occasional cyclists are often inclined to stick to the roads they know through driving or riding the bus. Typically these will be main routes which everyone else also drives, thus busy, fast, direct and blighted by ribbon development. Instead, head into your local labyrinth of countryside lanes for ambling rides along narrow carriageways, between the fields and past quaint village pubs.
Back Streets
These are the urban equivalent of the lanes. You know: the narrow residential streets that run parallel and perpendicular to the main ones; those with road furniture, awkward one way systems and blockades at strategic points to prevent them becoming rat runs. For cars and trucks wanting quick thoroughfares, they've deliberately been made useless. But for the nimble biker, they are ideal - and often more charismatic. Say you commute into The Square Mile; why wouldn't you want to take in the sights, sounds and smells around Brick Lane rather than dicing with the traffic on Bishopsgate?
Cycle Paths
Thanks to groups like Sustrans and increasingly environmentally conscious planning policies, purpose built cycle paths are appearing with ever greater frequency on the British landscape. Often they are incorporated into the infrastructure of new housing developments, although they may also chain together towns and villages, breach motoring dead ends or emerge as a side-product of new road layouts. Some tracks are notoriously pointless or awkward but the main problem with the more useful cycle paths is knowing where they are so that you can link them into a ride. Fortunately more and more local authorities are producing cycle route maps for their areas. Ask at your council offices.
Gravel / Dirt/ Cobble Roads
Inspired by great races like Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders, cobbled and un-metalled public roads are where roadies go for their little bit of rough. There aren't so many stretches to be found on our little island but root (or route) around long enough and you'll find something that throws up a similar effect. Think old airfields, farm tracks and those bumpy shortcuts on the edge of town that must have been overlooked during surfacing overhauls. For an event that incorporates this sort of riding, try the East Midlands Cicle Classic cyclo-sportive .
Parks
Whether it's Richmond Park in London or Central Park in New York, large metropolitan parks are an oasis for the city centre cyclist. Although routes within parks are not always closed to traffic, they typically break from the functional mould of most other city streets with sauntering curves, whimsical undulations and a general directionless that keeps subscribers to the urban dash away. Roads and cycle paths through parks might make for a good lunchtime loop, a Saturday afternoon spin or a corridor of calm on an otherwise manic commute.
Hills
Riding in the hills is quite a different experience to that of the flat. The ups and downs make for a lot more varied riding, offer greater panoramas and demand better handling skills and pace control. If you come from the flatlands, it's worth travelling to somewhere mountainous and - on or off road - giving this sort of terrain a go.
Rail Trails
Thanks to 20th Century deindustrialisation and Richard Beeching's notorious cutbacks in the 1960s, our green and pleasant land has been left a legacy of redundant railway routes that make for flat, peaceful, non-technical and easily accessed cycling. Although being enclosed by the cutting can get a bit monotonous on some trails, their traffic-free and generally flat nature makes them ideal for riding with kids. Fine examples of rail trails include the intercity Bristol & Bath line and the Scarborough-Whitby trail which follows a scenic route along the North Yorkshire coast.
Canal and River Paths
Like the old railways, canal and river towpaths offer a similarly flat, tranquil riding experience. Admittedly the hazard of wobbling off into the drink can seem a little unnerving so take extra care where the path is greasy. You can go for miles across country following waterways but canal-side riding is perhaps at its best in the bigger conurbations where alternative quiet routes are limited. Take modern day Birmingham for example. With its network of motorways and spaghetti junctions, this is a city designed around car travel. Yet just a hop, skip and jump away from the central Snow Hill station, you can descend to a network of canals with more mileage than Venice. From here in what feels like the bowels of the city, you pedal across town or off into the Black Country, largely oblivious to the industrial bustle of the urban sprawl above. To cycle some canal paths owned by British Waterways, you should theoretically be displaying a (free) permit.
Bridleways / Byways
We should think ourselves lucky in Britain that we have an ancient rights of way system. It's for this reason we can quite legitimately go traipsing across countryside which would otherwise be the domain of locked gates, keep-out signs and mantraps. Legally speaking, public footpaths are no-go for bikers, but both bridleways and byways (including the restricted byways formerly know as 'roads used as public paths') are legit for some great off-road riding. The quality and style of these routes vary from pleasant singletrack, rocky hill trails, dusty rutted cart tracks and horse trodden bogs, but they can typically be found all over the country. Just look out for wooden or little green signs at the roadside. Or get an OS map.
Mountain Bike Trail Centres
If you like mountain biking but have never been to one of the Forestry Commission's trail centres you really ought to try one out. Rather than having off-road routes initially formed 300 years ago by an old man trying to get his cart to market, the tracks here - particularly the more technical ones - are designed by people who also ride mountain bikes and know what makes for good riding. That's not to say everything is singletrack, berms and bumps. Most centres also offer less technical routes based on fire roads which should make for gentler family fun. Alongside the trails, many forest centres also offer such facilities as cafes, changing rooms, showers, shops, bike hire, play areas and jet washes. Access to the trails is usually free but car park prices can seem steep. Wales and Scotland have a particularly high concentration of forest centres and there are also some privately run mountain bike parks about.
Freeride
With a mountain bike you can also have fun just riding in a very small area. Take an old quarry, a small copse or a scrap of undulating wasteland and you could spend a good twenty minutes tackling various lines through it. On a similar theme, it's generally on this kind of discarded land that dirt jump enthusiasts build their kickers.
Long Distance Routes
For tours or merely a long day's outing, there are various long distance cycle and historic routes to be considered. These vary from local council devised circuits and those of Sustrans' National Cycle Network which pieces together back roads from points as far apart as the Shetland Islands and Dover (Route One) to cross-country epics like the Coast to Coast or Pennine Bridleway. There are also a number of ancient trails worth looking into such as the Peddars Way across Norfolk and the South Downs Way through Sussex and Hampshire. Usually these are all well signposted.
Quirky Themes
There are of course many other ad-hoc themes you could base rides around: riding over a dam; going through a tunnel; following a ridgeline; crossing a causeway; tackling steep hills; circumnavigating a lake; touring suburbia; mountain biking industrial estates. The possibilities are endless although the list gets increasingly absurd! If this kind of riding catches your imagination, you might be interested in Rob Ainsley's 50 Quirky Bike Rides book.
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