Towns in the UK that are cycle-friendly

[Ming the Merciless]

You need to live within the godawful ring road and then just never leave.

Pedestrian / tourist hell on the inside

 

[All uphill]

Stoke on Trent's roads aren't the best for cycling on but if you ride the canal path it virtually I encircles the city like a ring road and then theres a few old railway paths with a 10 mile gravel path to Congleton.

Sounds good, I wish I'd known about that a few years ago when I cycled from Stoke to Congleton.

I remember Congleton as being one of the least cycle- friendly places I have been. That may have been influenced by my tiredness and poor map reading.

 

[matticus]

Pedestrian / tourist hell on the inside

godamn pretty popular places, with not enough cars to keep the vermin out!

 

[All uphill]

Pedestrian / tourist hell on the inside

I'd rather cope with pedestrian hell than high speed car hell.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

I'd rather cope with pedestrian hell than high speed car hell.

The cars in York are not high speed 😂

 

[All uphill]

The cars in York are not high speed 😂

That's good!

 

[Cathryn]

We found in Spain last week that the bike paths were all red. This made them visibly different to the pedestrian pavement and we had no issues with people stepping out into them or walking in them. A fantastic solution.

 

[mjr]

Looking at some surveys from the last few years, Nottingham and Gosport seem popular places we've not discussed much. Anyone know them?

Looking at a map, Sheffield and Rotherham seem to have lots of cycle routes. Are they any good?

 

[All uphill]

The list of places that are cycle-friendly so far:

Bridgend
Bristol
Cambridge
Exeter
Leeds
London (parts)
Milton Keynes
Norwich
Oxford
 Taunton
Vale of Glamorgan
York (maybe)

I'm defining cycle-friendly as being somewhere you can get about on a bike, using good positioning and signals, without regular close passes and verbal abuse.

 

[Vantage]

The list of places that are cycle-friendly so far:

Bridgend
Bristol
Cambridge
Exeter
Leeds
London (parts)
Milton Keynes
Norwich
Oxford
 Taunton
Vale of Glamorgan
York (maybe)

I'm defining cycle-friendly as being somewhere you can get about on a bike, using good positioning and signals, without regular close passes and verbal abuse.

So not Bolton then.

 

[Sterlo]

Also the centre of Hull out to the ferry port and the centre of Newcastle out to the ferry port. Impressed with both of those routes

Unfortunately, that's about as good as it gets in Hull

 

[All uphill]

So not Bolton then.

I don't know; never been there. What do you think?

 

[slowmotion]

Swindon is a hell hole. Too many hot hatch testosterone tossers.
Meanwhile....Central London is paradise if you stay clear of all cycle paths. London motorists realised long ago that it's pretty inconvenient to knock cyclists off their bikes. They come across cyclists so often that they are experienced with driving amongst them. Out-of-towners are the people you have to watch out for.

 

[Vantage]

I don't know; never been there. What do you think?

I wouldn't feel safe driving a tank in this dump

 

[mjr]

Swindon is a hell hole. Too many hot hatch testosterone tossers.

I was wondering. Swindon and Worcester are two cities that have detailed guides on cycle.travel but haven't been suggested here. I've ridden neither.

Meanwhile....Central London is paradise if you stay clear of all cycle paths.

That's not a given. You can't blithely assume they're all great, but the Embankment cycleway (CS3) is much nicer than the carriageway alongside, for one example.

London motorists realised long ago that it's pretty inconvenient to knock cyclists off their bikes. They come across cyclists so often that they are experienced with driving amongst them. Out-of-towners are the people you have to watch out for.

UK car registration plates don't reliably indicate the residence of the current owner so there's pretty much no way to do that. However, it is a good idea to assume that nearly all tour buses/coaches in London are from elsewhere and will be absolutely shoot at driving in London, using bus lanes when not allowed (bus lane sign has "local" on it: the Holborn A40 ones are a favourite for abuse), pulling into cycle lanes or onto cycleways, allowing their passengers to disembark into live traffic lanes (including foreign coaches opening little swing-out emergency exit doors near the back), turning across traffic lanes from lane 1 without giving way (and not only cycle lanes, neither: I've seen more than one coach try to left hook a bus...) and much more. Letting these things go almost anywhere in central London (instead of restricting them to certain A roads) seems a bit like having a herd of short-sighted rhinos wandering amongst small birds: it's a miracle more don't get squashed.