Navigating busy roads

I want to talk about cycling in a town/city. I've had the pleasure of living in some wonderful places; Truro, Bristol, Leeds, Somerset and Plymouth. When I first moved to these cities I felt paralysed to cycle because of not knowing routes in, around and out of town. I would arrive to these places by car or train, and so I'd only know these routes. When I was a beginner long distance cyclist in Plymouth I would run and cycle along the main road from the centre out of town to the A38.


Now that I've gained experience I've learnt to always ride with local clubs or study maps to find the safest ways around town. Sometimes these are sustrans national cycle network cycle paths, they may be quiet country lanes or they may be main roads that run parallel alongside an even busier route. Personally I like to buy old maps and look at them, but you you can also use strava heatmaps, garmin connect popular routes, kamoot maps, and sustrans uses an OS powered map to show all of the cycle routes on their website.




When I visit my brother in Exeter we take the national cycle route 2 along the river Exe. You can take this route on either side of the river, and there are really good cafes in both Dawlish and in Exmouth. There is even the option of taking the train home from both Dawlish, Exmouth and other stops along the way.



The greatest piece of cycling infrastructure in the southwest is the Bristol to Bath cycle path. I highly recommend that absolutely everyone spends a day travelling between Bristol, Bath, Yate, and beyond. The route is completely traffic free and it's signposted like a road to help you navigate your way around. I imagine very handy if you're commuting home from a stressful day at work.



If you include Bristol city centre on your route you can extend this along the festival way, and the strawberry line. This would create an almost completely off-road route from Cheddar Gorge to Bath, and that features the Thatchers Farm / Railway Inn Pub. There are bicycle pumps, cafes, toilets, rivers to swim in, pubs to drink in, steam trains to race, benches to take a break on. 

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