martint235
Dog on a bike
- Location
- Welling
I did a big chunk of it from Honiton to Shaftesbury, and there it was fine. But avoid it west of Exeter - in effect it's a two-lane, hard-shoulderless extension of the M5, and is driven in such a fashion, all of the way down to nearly the end of Cornwall. There are far better choices, not least the old A30 road, which runs parallel for a lot of the way. As keen as I am to preserve cyclists' rights, and against all my libertarian principles, I'd ban bikes from this type of road: they are worse than real motorways, as there's even less margin for error on anyone's part. And the consequences of a mistake are almost always going to be fatal or extremely serious.
I think you have to allow for choice. From what you say, it sounds very similar to the A2 in Kent where the M2 joins it to become basically an extension of the motorway with an 'A' prefix. I don't mind cycling on it but I wouldn't take a group of cyclists on it. It is still the fastest way of getting between A and B if you're in a hurry though.