Monday, August 27

National cycle routes - a combination of cycling and orienteering.

Cycled out to Newstead Abbey today - being lazy with maps, I decided to follow the number 6 cycle route. After all, it's a national route, how bad can it be?

Oh dear. Some bits are rather nice, but in other sections you're stopping every ten metres for another obstruction, cycling down narrow and fairly unsalubrious back passageways, lugging the bike over pedestrian footbridges, or getting your legs whipped by nettles on overgrown paths.

Or, as I found more than once, trying to decide whether you should retrace your steps as you haven't seen a sign for rather a while, and perhaps you missed the turning - which may well be indicated by a bit of tape on a lampost on the other side of the road. Or there was another section where you are sent weaving from side to side of a road which frankly didn't look at all busy anyway - I wish in cases like that they'd separate it into a family route and an adult route, so you can take the kids on the cyclepath or just get on with it on the road.

I'm rather disgusted by the half-hearted nature of it to be honest. No idea if it is Sustrans or the council who are to blame for the bits that are lacking.

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