Towns in the UK that are cycle-friendly

[slowmotion]

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.


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.


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.

The closest I came to going under some very large wheels was courtesy of the driver of a Welsh tour bus taking punters to the 2012 Olympics. I faced a terrifying rapidly narrowing canyon on Kensington High Street when he cut back towards the kerb before clearing my bike. There have been other culprits who were easily identifiable as not being local to London. I'm not suggesting that Londoners are all perfect, merely that they are pretty good given the vast amount of traffic

 

[roubaixtuesday]

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.

No, it's shoot.

Likewise nearby Macclesfield.

 

[blackrat]

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.

"They come across cyclists so often that they are experienced with driving amongst them"
That is the solution, clearly. The more drivers see cyclists the more they will be used to sharing the road with them.

 

[steveindenmark]

I used to be a policeman on a bike in Milton Keynes. Coming from Hull to live in MK was a shock. The Redways were not easy to work out. But once I had done the knowledge😄. They were good. A great place for fishing for shop lifters and burglars. I think anything that removes you from traffic is good. MK is not a drivers town.

 

[mjr]

MK is not a drivers town.

huh? 60mph or higher roads spaced about 1km apart for the most part, with two to four T junctions per km, with 12 of them in each direction, plus two motorway-style roads through it NW-SE, makes driving easier than in most cities its size.