O.O'Brien

Completed, finally, my coast-to-coast bike ride across England, in eight stages. Coincidently I finished the last leg exactly a year after I started the first. The final stretch was the uphill one, from Bath to Bedwyn. After wandering around Bath, visiting the Royal Crescent, Victoria Circus and Pulteney Bridge, I headed along the canal, crossing the river by a couple of aquaducts, and passing through Avoncliffe (a real honey-pot), Bradford-upon-Avon, and Trowbridge. Then continuing along the canal, a more mundane section eventually led to the Caen Hill locks. An impressive sight, the 15 locks raise canal-boats by 72m. The cycle path continues right along the hill, before heading into Devizes at the top.

By now I was half-way along the day’s stage and quite tired, but had to pick up speed to make a train leaving Bedwyn in only a few hours. So I generally kept to faster roads rather than following National Cycle Route 4, which meanders all over the place, determined to keep cyclists to the most minor of roads, even going three sides of a square. Later I dropped back down onto the canal, visiting Crofton Pumping House in the gathering gloom at the very top of the canal (200m above sea-level) before dropping gratefully back into Bedwyn – it was very definitely dark now. There was just enough time to grab a much-needed pint in the village pub, and watch the local youth play chicken with 200km/h trains, before catching my own one back to London. Bedwyn is a nice, quiet village, and a fitting place to finish my ride.

The last section was particularly painful – 75km is a fair way, but I’ve definitely lost some fitness compared with earlier in the year. It was nice to test out my new mountain bike on a proper day-ride though, rather than just on the commute to work.

My favourite part of my whole route from Weston-super-Mare to Whitstable was the section across Windsor Great Park. The most unpleasant section was definitely Sittingborne in Kent.

The complete photo gallery, in geographic order, is here.

My next bike ride will be through the Downs and Weald from Crawley to Eastbourne, via Eridge, along National Route 21. Any one up for joining me? It’s around 45 miles long and is 80% on paths, so should be really enjoyable.

Last summer I managed to bike most of the way across England, starting from Bedwyn (near the watershed – the highest point of my route) and finishing in Whitstable in Kent. This summer I needed to finish the trip, in two long legs or three short legs from the west coast, back to Bedwyn.

Looking at the map, there was a quite a choice of places to start from. Avonmouth was one natural starting point, being at the mouth of the River Avon it would be quite apt as my route was essentially following the River Avon, then the Kennet and Avon canal, and finally the River Thames. However, Avonmouth doesn’t look like a particularly pretty place, and besides it’s all sealed off, being a major container port. Portishead and Clevedon were two other possible places, but neither was near a railway station. Brean Down has an intriguing footnote on the OS Map – “Mouth of the Severn”. This would be a natural place to start a coast-to-coast, but again it was not practical to get to. In the end I decided on Weston-super-Mare – a west coast beach resort which would contrast nicely with Whitstable’s east coast equivalent.

The National Cycle Routes guided me for most of the journey (Route 4 from Bristol to London and Route 1 from London to Whitstable) but annoyingly the network has not yet been built around Weston-super-Mare; so, after a stroll along the pier and through Weston Wood (a toll road!) the first part of the route was on country roads, and one unexpectadly exciting section off-road crossing the River Yeo – apart from the M5, it is difficult to cross this river without going a long way inland. I then headed up to Clevedon and then along a very pleasant country road only occasionally spoilt by the huge M5 suspended above it in places. I passed through the wonderfully named “Clapton in Gordano”, visiting its ex-church perched above the village in a beautiful setting. Then it was up the Avon Gorge, under the dramatic Clifton Suspension Bridge, and into Bristol centre, to meet up for the first time in a long time with a university friend, and to catch the England-Ecuador world cup game.

After the game, it was just starting to rain, but I had a train to get from Bath. So I headed through Bristol city centre, getting slightly lost before find the Bristol-Bath cycle bath. The path has a good surface and climbs only slightly gentle as it heads out of Bristol, through an exciting 700m long ex-railway tunnel before heading alongside another railway into Bath. I grabbed a meal in Bath and had a quick glance around the historic Abbey and Roman Baths, before getting the last train back to London.

At almost 85km, this was my longest day cycle ride ever, although only climbing 300m in that 85km means it’s got to be one of my flattest routes ever. Now only the final section, Bath to Bedwyn, remains – the section with pretty much all the climb up into the watershed.

I’m on a bit of a gadget spending spree at the moment. After my Trek 3900 bike, I went out an bought a Nokia N73 smartphone and a bluetooth GPS device. On yesterday’s bike ride I was tracking my route, the GPS in my rucksack beaming its location to my mobile phone which was running Nick’s NMEA Info python program.

Unfortuantely, I’m running the program on a Series 60 3rd edition phone, on which python is buggy – the text is unreadable and the application crashes on a regular basis. However, I was able to log a decent amount of data. On the map below you can see my logged route, starting with a wander around Bath (including up to Royal Crescent which looks over the city centre) and then heading out alongside the canal, towards Trowbridge and Devizes. You can see my detour down below the canal into Trowbridge, followed by a gradual climb of the canal towards Caen Hill and Devizes. There’s a bit of a gap later on, with just one point in Devizes town itself, and one point a bit further on – at this point, my mobile battery had had enough and I wasn’t able to keep logging, but I’m buying a memory card for the GPS so it can keep going in future.

I also had a go at GPS logging the train journey from Reading to Bath, but it was difficult to acquire a good signal. However, I noted the fastest speed we went at was 173km/h!

This map shows the long-distance bike rides I’ve done in the last year or so (purple) and those I’m hoping to do in the next few months (turquoise.) The sections are: Bath to Bedwyn (final stage in a cross-England route), Southampton to Bournemouth, Whitstable to Dover, Putney to Croydon, London to Eastborne (in at least two stages), Windsor to Welwyn Garden City and Arundel to Eastborne (South Down Way.) That should make up my 50 hours target nicely.