I’m staying in Bamburgh in a fortnight and then going to Masham for the weekend. I’m thinking I can ride it but know nothing about the route/conditions/wind/traffic conditions.

Its 135 miles which should be doable, but will be the longest I’ve done in one go (longest so far is 110).
Can anyone offer any advice about how hard this route will be?

The section to Newcastle seems to be sustrans route 1 and pretty flat but beyond that? I’m not fast so I reckon I’d be on the road 12+ hours.

Bamburgh to Masham

Hi – that’s quite a ride you’ve got planned but doable if you’re fit – it’s relatively flat until you hit the Durham hills or start heading west into the dales but if you’re using a lot of the sustrans routes and old railway lines then the gradients will be relatively steady. The route will have some nice stretches and not so nice spots so I’d be prepared with some puncture resistant tyres 🙂 but generally should be a good ride.

(Note: technically your route doesn’t go to Newcastle, it goes through North Tyneside but we can let that go)

If you had more time or were up for a bigger challenge then you could go inland and round to the west of Newcastle and into Yorkshire via Weardale / Teesdale – some great scenery and roads but it would be considerably more hilly.

There’s some great road riding around Bamburgh and some good MTB west into the Cheviots and Simonside hills so you should have a good time.

Thanks, thats helpful. It looks like about 5000 feet of climbing over the day, but concentrated in two main sections. That should be doable, as long as I stock up on kitkats and kendal mint cake before I set off.

I’m reasonably fit at the moment, in better shape than when I did the coast to coast a couple of years ago anyway.

Never take Kendle Mint Cake, 90% of epic tales of death and suffering in the mountains involve Kendle Mint Cake. There must be a link – I personally believe it to be bad luck packaged as a bar.

cool. Plenty of opportunities for carbo loading on ice cream and fish and chips between Whitley Bay and South Shields. Weather wise – roll of the dice… it could be windy on the coast but its usually blowing from W/ SW, S / SE rarer but more likely in summer, your ideal tailwind is a northerly but that’s least likely direction in summer.

Well I did this route last friday and made it one piece. The coast from Bamburgh down to North Shields was gorgeous and mostly traffic free routes. A highlight for me was the coastal route from Craster to Alnmouth along the cliff tops. I’m really glad it didn’t take the road route for that section.

The weather was kind and although it got cloudier as I travelled further south I managed to avoid all the rain.

I arrived at the ferry just as it was leaving so rolled straight on, which saved me enough time to grab some lunch. One thing I learned on this ride is that I really hadn’t been eating enough on previous long rides. I must have got through about 5 cakes during the course of the day and was still hungry at the end.

The route then took me south past Souter and into Sunderland. Again mostly traffic free and pretty quite through Sunderland itself. Then I joined an old Colliery railway track that took me off road nearly all the way to Stockton on Tees. The track surface was variable and in some sections I might have been better off on my MTB.

At Wynward Woodland I met a guy who was travelling from London to Edinburgh, three days in he looked a bit tired and said he’d been battling headwinds all day and had only managed 80 miles so far. Respect.

The final 30 miles or so were on quiet country lanes working my way down towards Masham and were a bit of drag as I was mostly into the wind. The final descent into Masham leading to the White Bear Hotel was very welcome.

Here’s a relive.cc of the ride.

Nice ride !

Wholeheartedly approve .

Great stuff, glad it went well and thanks for posting the route too.

Excellent but remember Northumberland shit if anyone asks.

Northumberland shit

Really rubbish. Noone was friendly and the food wasn’t good anywhere we went*. The weather was awful too and too many cars.

*Except Alnwick Gardens. That actually was shit.

Yeah the food is poor in the Gardens.