I’m trying to put together a charity bike ride from our London office (Charing Cross) to our Warwick office and want to put together a draft route for the proposal. I’m hoping to make the route about 100 miles (a nice number for charity purposes) and will ride it to check suitability and make final tweaks before riding it with the charity group.

I’ve looked at a few options, but I don’t know London well enough to pick a suitable route out! Please can I have any suggestions to get from Charing Cross out beyond the M25 (heading NW)?

I’ve looked on the ‘Ride with GPS’ website and that suggests using the tow path alongside the Grand Union Canal for most of the route from the M25 to Leamington, how suitable is this? Thanks

Not suitable for road bikes and gets pretty rough and muddy around Napton.

I road home from a beer festival from Hackney to Coventry earlier in the year and the route was great.

I used cyclestreets.net and used the ‘quietest’ setting to get out of London. It was probably too wiggly a route to do with a group, but the ‘balanced’ setting is usually pretty good at avoiding really busy roads.

Link to my route here:
https://www.strava.com/activities/677166611

I think you’ll be doing well to fit it in in 100 miles.

I stopped at Stowe NT property, nice cafe and you don’t need to be a member to get into it.

Cheers Ed, I suspected so much about the canal path.

Bump for those who log in with their morning coffee!

National cycle route 6, which I think takes you onto the canal eventually.
Maybe have a look at a1000 North into hertfordshire ,follow the quiet roads east of Luton and then then look for Chilterns cycle way , heading n/w. towards Aylesbury.
From there, it’s all badlands to me. 🙂

Yeah I did it the other way on the grand union. Rough as hell in places.

+1 re the canal path.
Great to ride if not in a rush/on the right bike but would be very tough as part of a group, especially if it has been raining.
Mud + cobbled sections which are lethal when wet.