Traffic Free Events

[hoppym27]

My wife did the New Forest Sprong Sportive with me and she enjoyed the occasion but she really doesnt like roads, to the point that she panics and ends up being a danger to herself!

Does anyone know of any traffic free or closed road sportives/rides/events that take place, maximum distance of around 30 miles? We are in Manchester but happy to travel to wherever for the right event.

I've looked at the Lets Ride events but they are only 5km so not worth even getting on the bike really!

 

[mjr]

RideLondon FreeCycle Saturday is an 8-mile loop which you could do three times https://www.prudentialridelondon.co.uk/events/freecycle/ - the 46 on the Sunday is a bit over your limit but it's London so only a few hills at the end. There's Velothon Wales and Etape Caledonia which are also major closed-road sportives - Caledonia has a 40 mile option but I think this year's was yesterday - and Tour of Cambridgeshire is a gran fondo, but it looks like there's currently nothing between the 4/8/12 mile Family Fondo (on a 2 mile loop inside the showground) and the IMO-misnamed Mellow Velo at 56 miles.

Does it need to be a closed-road event? Open road sportives (at least in East Anglia) do seem to have a bad habit of using short stretches of pretty gnarly A road and relying on either warning signs/notices getting motorists to avoid the area or participants outnumbering motorists to make them give up trying to overtake cyclists badly - heck, I've been riding decades but I could easily understand a rider panicking when on a busy road being swamped by close-formation club riders, which I think was the last sportive I rode. If you're happy to travel to a start point, I suspect there's a few decent motor-free cycleway rides of that length available, plus then you could consider starting to slowly mix in bits of quiet roads to link motor-free routes and build up to busier ones.

And it's always worth getting on the bike

 

[Sixmile]

I've just registered myself and my wife for the Great Dublin Bike Ride in September. Sure it's only a wee trip on the ferry