London - Nelson

In June I'm planning on either riding from London to Nelson or Nelson to London to see my parents and to take part in the Manchester - Morecambe FNRttC.

I've come up with a first draft of my route here. Can anyone with local knowledge of the areas I pass through spot anything glaringly wrong? I'm pretty much ok to London - Watford and Rochdale - Nelson.

Cheers

Start or finish in Trafalgar Sq. Nelson to Nelson. If you wanted to up the distance a tad there is a VIA Nelson in S. Wales.

Well I'll actually be starting at home and finishing at my parents and I'm NOT going via South Wales.

Start at Trafalgar Square - it is a 'no arm/eye-er' really.

I'm claiming a great minds moment here Adrian - with full credit to you as having the greater mind, and least to do between thinking and typing.

Bizzare! You intend to ride halfway across the country yet manage to pass within a few hundred yards of my front door (183.5 mile mark). I can't see any obvious faults with the route, you rightly avoid the Chapel-en-le Frith bypass. I see all the hills are in the North.

Yeah I had a brief discussion about this with my dad last year and it was decided that whichever way I went north from Burton, I'd be climbing quite a lot!

You are doing a lot of A-roads and avoiding a lot of really nice roads.

If you would like a challenging, much quieter, more scenic route for the northern half - the route I took from Coventry to Hebden Bridge is that, and Nelson is another scenic 13 miles over the tops from here! Just ask and I'll put it on Bikely for you.

Cheers for the comments Colin. There are a fair few A roads I admit but this is primarily a solo A-B ride. I'll be looking at leaving home (or parents) at about 5am and arriving at the destination at around 7pm so I don't really have much sightseeing time.

(And I'll probably be way too knackered to tackle the top roads from HB to Nelson at the end!!!

However if you could put your route up I could alter things a little.

Thinking logically, wouldn't it make sense to do the return journey as then you will get the hills out of the way first and it will be generally down hill from there?

Oh - you are doing it in one day - gulp!

My route was generally designed for maximum scenery and minimum traffic so I didn't make any allowances for difficulty. It goes over Snake Pass and Holme Moss as well as lots of other steeper, smaller climbs.

I'll put it on Bikely anyway in case you or anybody fancies lifting parts of it. It'll take me 10 or 15 minutes ...

Yeah I've thought that. My initial thought was get the Friday night train to Manchester, ride the FNRttC to Morecambe, cycle from Morecambe to Nelson and have a few days there before cycling back. However I then thought if I cycle to Nelson I won't have my backpack on for the FNRttC and I can just cycle to Manchester or Preston on the Sunday for the train back. Still very much up in the air.

Cheers Colin. Yep it's a one day ride otherwise I probably would take the time to go out of my way and enjoy a few decent climbs. Even with a direct route though I'll have 13,000ft of climbing to do.

Martin - thanks for pointing me towards this thread.

Couple of thoughts - as mentioned already by the OS Oracle (Colin) you have a lot of A-roads, however you explain why which is understandable. Do you have a gps navigator as this will clearly negate the need to go the "easy" way.

I started thinking about doing a Manchester to London run last year. At the time I cobbled together a route that took me through Cheshire, then Oxfordshire (IIRC), i.e. quite a bit west and quite a bit flatter than 12,000ft (as I avoided the Peak district intentionally). Unfortunately I didn't save the route. Was there any specific reason for taking the route you have (perhaps avoiding Manchester)?

Okay, a scenic route from Coventry to Hebden Bridge - here on Bikely.

I do have a GPS unit but I do tend to be a direct route kind of person. The primary aim is to get the ride into daylight hours which in June is around 4am to 10pm ish.

It is literally a first draft drawn up by just heading in roughly the right direction whilst in Ride With GPS so there will be some tweaks. Also I'm riding to York in April which may result in me ditching this route altogether and going up the east side and then across the Pennines.

I've left London on the A5 because I've ridden that a few times and as arterial London roads go it isn't too bad. I don't want to try to get out the western side of London particularly as it always seems to be busier out that way.

I was always going to avoid Manchester as I don't need to be that far west really.

Thanks Colin. I think the extra hills may put me off as it might be the end of a very long day.

Actually Colin, I am toying with a similar idea for the summer. A ride down to my dad’s house in Cwmbran, near Newport, south Wales. It's around 160 miles but a little climbing as I pass near Abergavenny (tries desperately to remember the name of the hill range in that area....). I too was planning on a one day big hit strategy with an escape overnight stop planned for around the 110-120 mile mark for if it didn't work out. There has to be an enormous sense of achievement from completing something on this scale?

Black Mountains? Brecon Beacons? I used to walk in that area a lot years ago.

The Black Mountains?

I thought about doing my trip for years but didn't feel fit enough until 2007. When I finally did the ride, I coped with it really well and I did feel pretty pleased with myself afterwards. I enjoyed it so much that I rode back a week later rather than coming back by train.

Bikely shows it as 126 miles but I haven't followed all the little twists and turns in the roads, and I also took a wrong turn when for some stupid reason I stopped following my GPS's instructions and tried to improvise a new end to the route! Somebody had turned a road sign round and I almost ended up in Nuneaton instead of Coventry. Including stops, it took me 12 hrs 45 minutes to do 141 miles.

On the way home, I discovered that Snake Pass was closed for resurfacing. Normally, I'd take a chance and try and sneak by, but it is an awfully long way to ride up there and then have to come back down again if it was impassable! I rode to Holmfirth via Strines Moor instead, a route I actually preferred to the way I'd ridden out. I was doubly chuffed that I managed to ride up the 25% section of Ewden Bank with panniers on my bike!

It sounds as though your 160-miler has less climbing than my 141 miler and you are at least as fit as I was in 2007, so I say - go for it! Choose a day near the Summer Solstice to give yourself plenty of daylight hours and hope for pleasant warm conditions. (My ride took place on June 28th in the miserable 2007 summer. I wore arm and leg warmers plus a gilet and overshoes. When I was descending off Snake Pass towards Ladybower, I got so chilled that I had to stop and add a windtop!)

What about via Portsmouth or Norfolk? Either way you need to add 5 miles to make it a double.