They bloody well are though aren’t they? Over 15 mile commute home barely touching that horrid tarmac stuff

We’re spoilt rotten in the North West. They’re all over the shop. Literally

😀

Got one a few hundred metres from home and yup it’s a great resource for linking up trails / commuting etc

They are when they’re not under a gritty layer of liquid mud like they are now.
But yes, when it’s dry or frozen, I can do the same, a 17 mile commute to work using towpaths, cycle tracks and urban parkland, barely a road in sight!

I’ve got the Grand Union on my doorstep. If I’ve got a long day I’ll cycle the canal and jump off at Ivinghoe Beacon or near wendover Woods. Go the other way and I can use it to get to Woburn.

Yeah we are blessed in brum too, can get from my house to Warwick or Stratford (25milesish) pretty much entirely on canals. Can use the rea valley route to get out clent way too. Makes you really notice when you have to brave busy roads!

They are indeed. To celebrate the Kennet and Avon’s 200th Anniversary I did a ‘2ook in a day, two days two hundred miles’ ride on it last year.

Only problem is it gets too popular on summer weekends – ends up like the wacky races.

Yep great 🙂

i think canals are brilliant. i always thought they seemed like a lot of effort to build but apparently 1 horse can pull 50 tons on a canal compared to 1/2 a ton in a cart. we should use canals for transporting non perishable goods around again.

We’re lucky in Stoke that the Council and British Waterways and I suspect SUSTRANS too upgraded quite significant if not all of the towpaths in our area. As said great for commuting, leisure rides etc. It’s very noticeable now how bad the towpaths are where they haven’t been improved (Barlaston to Meaford springs obviously to mind).

An excellent resource that is sometimes under appreciated by us cyclists.

Current commute is 12 miles each way, 2/3 of which I can do on tow and/or cycle paths – stress free commuting.

Without family commitments I could take the scenic route in which would be nearer 20 miles but only 1 mile on tarmac…….

Indeed they are.

My current commute involves 0.5 mile of road and track followed by 10 miles of towpath and 200 yards of pavement at the other end.

So much nicer (and flatter) than the road route.

1st Commute of the year today and the Bridgewater into Trafford park has been resurfaced with Resin bound Aggregate. Must of cost a fortune. Lovely run though.

When I was fantasising about an offroad end to end I had a look at the canal network. It looks like a substantial part of England could be covered by sticking to canal towpaths where possible. Obviously not the most direct route.

Anyone actually tried this?

quite hilly towpaths here and a mile long tunnel which you have to ride over a field and then descend singletrack to get to the other side, such a chore 😉

They’re nice to have available. I ride to Tunnel Hill almost entirely on the towpath, which is nice, but you can’t go flat out because of pedestrians and dogs. I need to put a bell on my bike, since even my ProII hub doesn’t always work to get people’s attention.

It’s surprising how “hilly” the towpath can be. The ride home is miles quicker and easier for something that looks flat apart from a few locks.

love riding on the canal’s. Good for a spin and connecting trials together. I love the smell of the fire’s the long boat homes use in winter.

Can be deceptively hard. One of my Road groups rides starts and finishes at a village on a canal. The easiest ride home is backup the canal which is “uphill” against the fall of the locks. After 60 or 80 miles it can be deceptively tiring. But easier than the road equivalent.

Occasionally I used a short section of the Bridgewater Canal as I ride back from Irlam into Didsbury via Dunham. Not exactly direct, but a laugh on 24c tyres….

The one canal I haven’t ridden along (as there isn’t much in the way of paths alongside), is the Manchester Ship Canal. I do cross it everyday, however. Views are great from Warburton toll bridge.

I live just a few hundred yards from the Grand Union/River Lea, and soon I will be able to cycle just a couple of miles or so up to this place:

I can do a loop round London using the Regents Canal and Thames Path, about 50 miles virtually car-free apart from the little bit round Islington. Canals rock! 🙂

Yes, it’s virtually the only biking I did last year (apart from a week in Espain). Bingley to Skipton (13.5 miles) and return, 4 days a week, lovely open countryside, May to Aug, got me fit and buff looking, despite the only climb being 5 rise locks. Planning to do more of it this year. Only downer was regular thorn punctures, tho on that score it was nice to stop and help people less prepared.

That’s a mighty big pringle! But ermmyeah canals are great, except around here they seem to be tarmacing all the paths 🙁

I do like dragging up old posts 😉

After moving home, my commute has gone from a 10 mile A road hell to all off road 7 mile car free jaunt.

Part of it is along the Birmingham to Worcester Canal, which at the Worcester ennd has recently been resurfaced, so seeing a noticable increase in bike traffic.

& yes I do have a permit 😉

Took this one recently during the snowy snap we had recently, not me in the pic btw 😉

We’re trying to move from latte central (south Manchester) to darkest Lancs. Well, near Wigan, so pretty dark.

A quick skim on the map tells me that the ride between the two could be done almost entirely along a canal, with small lanes at either end.

Genius. Well done those Irish Navvies…! 😀

Ours is all bendy and consequently means a journey time can be significantly reduced by not using it.

One mile on road or three on the tow path in some instances. OK when you have lots of time but…..

So not that great.

you lucky lucky buggers.

wish my 15 miles to work was flat as a pancake.
might tempt me out of my comfy car easier.

I love the canal network around Brum.

I often ride to the canal at Tardebigge and then down to Worcester and back, it’s a good way of getting 40 miles in without having to drive somewhere first. The return leg up the longest flight of locks in the UK can get a bit tiring though.

I also ride to Stratford and into Brum and do tours around. It’s interesting to see the city from the canal, it gives a very different perspective. I bought all the Geo Maps for the midlands canal system and they are very good, especially for only a fiver each.

It’ll be nice once they dry out again soon, as some of them are in terrible condition in places during the winter months.

Hope you all have downloaded and printed your permit that is required by all cyclists using towpaths 😀

Steve,

will have to join you on one of your trips round brum on the canals or one of the runs to worcester

My local canal breached about 80 years ago and dumped a couple of boats along with their cargo and horses about 100ft down the embankment into the river below.

Awesome.

2 words:

“f*cking thorns” 😉

@oldgit – That pic looks suspiciously like Horton Lock?

They are great, apart form the odd fat grumpy fisherman round our way who deliberately moves into the track to block it, whilst shouting about speed limits and slowing down..

IS there a speed limit for a towpath? – I’m probably better off not knowing though..

There is always at least one grumpy retard on every canal ride i do. Doesn’t matter how polite you are, how many times you ring your bell or call out in a friendly manner, slow down etc, they are just intent on inconveniencing you. I’ve learnt to ignore them now. Most of the fishermen near me seem ok, you’ve just got to look out for those massive carbon rods they block the towpath with!

Thorns are also an issue, particularly at certain times of the year. If i see the farmers have recently cut the Hawthorn bushes i turn around as punctures are pretty much guaranteed (even when i used slime tubes).

Votchy – yes i do have a permit (waste of time that they are) and i’ll let you know next time i have a trip planned.

Living in Redditch we use the Worcester/Birmingham canal alot in our rides. The field over the tunnel and singletrack descent back onto the towpath that Rocketdog speaks of is good fun and gets us to within spitting distance of the Lickey Hills without riding much tarmac. The Tardebigge to Worcester run is good stress free pootling when it’s dry and/or frozen.

We’ve never ridden the canal all the way into Brum though. It seems to disappear into another tunnel after Hopwood until Kings Norton. Can anyone comment what the remainder of the ride is like into central Birmingham? (I’ve toyed with the idea of riding into Brindley Place or The Mailbox in the summer for a couple of social drinks then a slow pootle back)

A naughty well known person from here, cycled onto our very frozen local canal last January, I knew it was him, ‘cos I recognised the tyre prints.

Yes they are great, even with the thorns and grumpy walkers and tons of doggy do do.
Loads of wildlife to look out for too.

Just wish the local yobs wouldn’t throw in traffic cones, wheelie bins and shopping trollies when it ices over.

timothecimmerian

Yeah, you have to go on the road a bit shortly after the Hopwood pub.
You leave the Canal onto Wasthill Lane, passing the BCFC training ground (on the left).
You then have a 5 min ride through a council estate, rejoining the canal at the junction of Shannon Rd / Foyle Road.
A bit further along you come to a junction in the canals.
Straight on for Earlswood or left for Bham.
The ride into Bham is pretty nondescript but you enter Bham at the Mailbox.
From there you have plenty of choices but a nice ride is towards Lichfield. You drop down the locks under Spagetti Junction and quickly join the green belt from there. It isn’t too far along to Kingsbury Water Park (<90mins from The Mailbox I reckon) and it’s right on the canal. Decent cafe there too. You also pass a few nice pubs.

A naughty well known person from here, cycled onto our very frozen local canal last January, I knew it was him, ‘cos I recognised the tyre prints.

How irresponsible of him… 😉

You don’t need a permit anymore. British Waterways ditched that scheme cos a) they were free, b) very few people knew about them and c) no-one ever checked or enforced it.

I know what you mean about canals being deceptively hilly. My route takes me through the famous* Marple Lock Flight which is one of the biggest canal drops in the UK, over 200ft in little more than a mile.

*well, it’s famous if you’re a canal geek or you live near Marple and to be fair, it’s some pretty impressive engineering.

Agreed.

I’ve done a huge canal ride a couple of times – Stourbridge-Stewponey-Wolverhampton-Birmingham-Worcester-Train back to Stourbridge.

Pretty much every local ride i do from the door involves canal towpaths at some point

There’s an easy way to deal with grumpy fishermen who purposely leave their (very expensive) rods across the tow path. Bunny-hop them. They REALLY hate that 😈 but aren’t fast enough to get any retribution.

@oldgit – That pic looks suspiciously like Horton Lock?

Spot on. I cycled it a lot when training for the 3 Peaks, I used it to get me to the foot of Ivinghoe Beacon instead of roads.
Thorns 😡 I had to get rescued from one cross ride after eight punctures.

only good when they are not as muddy as can be so it depEnds on the quality of the towpath –
They also strim the edges and this makes thorny punctures a nightmare at times
Prefer the road to commute tbh faster and easier it is just commuting it is not mean to be fun and I lived on a boat so saw enough of the cut, knew everyone I saw so had to stop and say hello etc
The ice got to nearly a foot thick a few weeks ago – I drilled it to see how thick it was in the middle – you could have driven a car dwon it IMHO.

My local’s the Leeds-Liverpool.

Ten minutes from my door it’s a useful link to local trails around Shipley Glen and Bingley and a 12 mile commute into Leeds for work. A nice wind-down after a day’s work or set-up for the day.

I used to commute on the road but found myself getting into too many scrapes with drivers. After reading “Cyclecraft” I managed to sort out most of the problems by riding more assertively and technically competently. Why bother though when there’s a scenic route instead.