Anybody offer any advice on the off road alternative to the standard coast to coast. I have done the standard route a couple of times and I'm up for a different challenge next year and was wondering if anybody has any experiences of it.

Milage, time taken, difficulty level etc

I fancied doing Hadrians Wall on a bike. I walked/camped it back in my 20's – breathtaking scenery.

That's nearly coast to coast and mostly off-road.

Somebody publishes a route but I can't remember his name which is mostly off road but is very hard in parts. A bit of googling uld turn it up

Tim woodcock's route is good.

Derek Purdy's more Northern route is also worth a look. Going over styhead on a loaded bike is hard work though…

I bumped into some guys at Muker doing the Woodcock route and they'd had a tough day around there on some of the trails as they were peat bogs.

Try these

http://www.bikely.com/listpaths/srchkey/c2c/country/253/is/Offroad

Done Hadrian's wall a couple of years ago, camped near Vindolanda Roman fort and kept thinking there were ghosts of soldiers wandering around. I think that could have been the Irn Bru and whisky I'd been drinking however.

i did tim woodcock's route (st bees-robin hoods bay) a few months ago. some of it in the lakes was a bit boggy but there are diversions if its wet. i got the book from amazon but i think its out of stock at the moment (you have to drop on one as its out of print, the newer version does not have maps btw)

i did it on my own with reasonably leightweight bivvi gear, but you can easily do it by stopping in youth hostels if you prefer. i did it in 3 1/2 days but aiming to do it in 6/7 would be better in a group/allowing for stops/easier mileage per day etc

hadrians wall is also good, not sure how you could do it with a bike mind as its mostly footpath. we walked/bivvied it over 3 days in march with sub zero nights – canny cold! also maybe check out the border reivers route – that goes up via newcastleton/kielder so you could knock a few trail centres off as well! i think much of it is on road mind

Yeah, a lot of Hadrian's wall bike route is on road but it's still nice scenery and you get to see a lot of the wall. Wylam's a good place to stop, there's a nice campsite just out of the village and the Boat House pub is a cracker. Then you can have a pootle down the banks of the Tyne all the way to the coast. Magic.