mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
What's the best touring cycleway in England now? With 2021 travel options looking uncertain, I'm looking for ideas closer to home, in case our postponed tour gets cancelled or postponed again, as seems likely. We really enjoyed last year's ride along the Vennbahn, so my mind turns to cycleways. Do we have anything similar in England?
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_trails#England the longest ex-railway one is the 37½ miles of the Downs Link from Guildford to Shoreham-on-sea, but it seems like there are now lots of cycleways about 15 miles long (and not all of them ex-railways, despite the below). Can some of them be strung together into a tour easily?
I started sketching a plan with the Water Rail Way Boston-Lincoln-Tuxford which now looks like about 50 miles, even if about 40% is technically small roads rather than cycleway. Boston is not too far from me and then from the Tuxford end, the Bilsthorpe Trail (5mi), Meden Trail (2mi) and Teversal Trail (5mi) plus 27 miles of back roads would connect to the High Peak Trail (15mi) which in turn connects to Tissington Trail (15mi) and Manifold Way (8mi). A return leg could include the Derby Canal and Cloud Trail Greenway which is another 11 mile section, but after that it would be crossing Leicestershire to finish the loop, which looks like yet another failing county for long-distance cycle routes.
If I had more time, I guess I could head south for 4 miles of Great Central Way, 15 of Brampton Valley Way and 13 of St Ives-Cambridge but they're few and far between, really.
Do you know better? Either tweaks to the above route or completely different ideas - even if they're the other side of England to me, I'd still be interested to read reviews of them.
The "part of a tour" requirement is me hoping to exclude a few cycleways that seem to expect people to drive to them or have a road full of nasty fast motorists at one end.
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_trails#England the longest ex-railway one is the 37½ miles of the Downs Link from Guildford to Shoreham-on-sea, but it seems like there are now lots of cycleways about 15 miles long (and not all of them ex-railways, despite the below). Can some of them be strung together into a tour easily?
I started sketching a plan with the Water Rail Way Boston-Lincoln-Tuxford which now looks like about 50 miles, even if about 40% is technically small roads rather than cycleway. Boston is not too far from me and then from the Tuxford end, the Bilsthorpe Trail (5mi), Meden Trail (2mi) and Teversal Trail (5mi) plus 27 miles of back roads would connect to the High Peak Trail (15mi) which in turn connects to Tissington Trail (15mi) and Manifold Way (8mi). A return leg could include the Derby Canal and Cloud Trail Greenway which is another 11 mile section, but after that it would be crossing Leicestershire to finish the loop, which looks like yet another failing county for long-distance cycle routes.
If I had more time, I guess I could head south for 4 miles of Great Central Way, 15 of Brampton Valley Way and 13 of St Ives-Cambridge but they're few and far between, really.
Do you know better? Either tweaks to the above route or completely different ideas - even if they're the other side of England to me, I'd still be interested to read reviews of them.
The "part of a tour" requirement is me hoping to exclude a few cycleways that seem to expect people to drive to them or have a road full of nasty fast motorists at one end.
