Does this feel a bit wrong to anyone else?
I’m lucky with my bike commute that I can either go the short but hilly road way, the off-road way through the woods or pick one of many long ways home on the road bike. I also sometimes fancy going as fast as I can along the canal tow-path on my xc bike. A lot of the canal near me is being tarmacked replacing the old hard packed surface. Now I’m all for improvements and it is definitely more accessible for more people and will be more durable for the long-term which is a good thing but it just feels a bit wrong. I have used the canals since I could walk but now they feel like road footpaths. Even if I take the kids for a walk down the canal with the pushchair I still preferred the old surface as it was just part of a what a walk down the canal has always been.
As I said I understand it’s for the greater good and I’m all for it being better for disabled access and pushchair access etc.
Another annoying thing I just realised is that I use the canals for running in the summer as a softer alternative on the knees to running on the road.

The worst thing though is the well-trodden patches of dog mess that are now more visible. I was shocked just how much there was and I don’t think I would be exaggerating if I said there was patches every 3m. Before ignorance was bliss and it was well camouflaged.

Lastly I’m wondering how much I can knock off my fastest time now I could do it on the road bike. Safely of course.

Whats the question? 🙂

I think one day they’ll all be linked to the NCN routes, I know it looks a bit rubbish but does encourage more users out there..

gravel paths mean uneven surface which means puddles after rain.
tarmac = less so.

These Birmingham towpaths?

I’d have thought the hardpack sustrans type surface would be better.

Tarmac will just make cycling faster and walkers\fisherman more upset. Leeds-Liverpool canal has had lots of bits done between Leeds and Bradford and probably further afield.

the tarmac paths work well where I am. certainly meant access is easer/less muddy for folk and enabled some rapid commutes.

only downside I see is that tarmac is more prone to problems with ice patches.

Good for cycle transport, much more user-friendly than soft/muddy/uneven paths. I also like them for running, but then I’m mostly thinking from my own POV of road running where a flat smooth car-free surface is a bit of a luxury. I’ve already got lots of off-road choices and don’t suffer from hard surface injuries. Do agree that a tarmac path seems a bit odd for a countryside walk though.

There’s an unimproved towpath not far from here and I’ve been told it’s pretty shit for cycling (skipton and around).

I certainly don’t disagree with the mud comments.

Wollaston / Stourbridge and I work in Cradley so tend to jump on at either Brierly hill or Netherton.

I wouldn’t like it but the Kennet & Avon is mainly rural so I guess somewhat different. Surface is ‘good enough’ for cycling, and I don’t think tarmaccing it would encourage an extra use, just annoy a bunch of other users.

Most of the ones I use for commuting – Erewash and Nottingham canals – have been hard surfaced and they get a lot of use. If I add on the extra distance to take in the Long Eaton stretch and the river side past Trent Lock, the path is muddy, uneven, rutted and gets worse every winter.

I understand the reluctance to tarmac towpaths, but it offers a great chance to boost the amount of smooth, flat cycle paths for families, kids, commuters and cycle tourists, as well as other non-cycling user groups.

We have no more right to have sole choice of the surface of towpaths than we do for bridleways. However frustrating that might be sometimes.

Resurfacing the towpaths in Birmingham has been great for my commute. Can get in and out of the city traffic free now. The canals does run all the way out to my house but these paths are only suitable for commuting in the summer months. Axle deep in mud in some parts right now so its country lanes instead for me.

Are you annoyed that your new Gravel Bike has been made obsolete?

I’m more concerned that I may be “over-biked” on my nomad!

They’d have been tarmacced from day 1 if that had been an option, most likely. So “it was just part of a what a walk down the canal has always been”, soon it’ll stop feeling new and weird and just be normal. Especially once it ages and dirties up and the plants encroach etc, new raw tarmac is ugly.

My longer commute’s on mostly tarmac canal path, it’s ace. But can be iffy when it’s frozen, to be fair. Then again so can mud. I sometimes ride out further just for the ride and it soon gives way to sludgy mud, not so nice. I’m happy with either but I reckon tarmac is better for more users, and should remain so with minimal upkeep. A really good, well maintained gravel path would do the same job but more expensively.

😆

Its no joke. where am I going to use it now?

Tarmac will just make cycling faster and walkers\fisherman more upset

Sign I’ve seen asked for cyclists to pass other users at a maximum of 5MPH. IIRC correctly that’s somewhere between Brighouse and Hebden but I can’t recall exactly where.

gravel paths mean uneven surface which means puddles after rain.
tarmac = less so.

However gravel paths are more durable to poor maintenance regimes than Tarmac – one of the big challenges there being that as tarmac collects leaf mulch and water in winter months, black ice is a far greater risk on tarmac than it is on a gravel surface. next to a canal that has clear safety implications

secondly, Tarmac surfaces are not horse friendly, which given the origin of tow paths is unacceptable

thirdly, the very important point is made above that tarmac surface is likely to increase rider speed, leading to increased conflict and the potential for a greater severity of injury in the event of a crash.

simply bad practice in my opinion

some gravel would be nice on the leeds liverpool canal between Gargrave and Keighley though I do believe some is being laid at Skipton

Agree that tarmac is just wrong for a towpath

Rochdale Canal around Tod and Hebden is used as a convenient, pretty, traffic free alternative route by most people.

Seems a bit selfish to deny that to everyone.

Huuuge job though.
Needs fixing properly first too.

And you need to take other users into account – better surfaces mean higher speeds and more people.
The fishermen, walkers and horsey types might not be too happy to see ‘their’ towpath turned into a ‘bike path’.

I’d like any kind of surface on parts of my local canal route, it used to be a reliable all weather evening ride but these last couple of years sections of it have been severely rutted and several inches deep in mud
Tarmac wouldn’t be my first choice for the reasons outlined above by ninfan

Gravel wouldn’t stay in place very long with the amount of traffic the paths get. Resin bonded gravel would probably be best, but is expensive, and no local authorities have any money anymore.

It’s unusual for sure, but I don’t see a problem with it. Canals are man-made so no reason why the paths shouldn’t be. There are plenty of away from the road cycle paths near me, quite a significant network, they’re great when we go on our cycle pub crawls in the summer for getting around without going anywhere near the roads, and they’re all tarmac’d, so riding along a canal on a similar path seems fine.

I agree with the OP, I was a bit saddened when they did the ones in Birmingham.

Objectively though I realise that this is a bit irrational and/or selfish.
The paths could get in a right state when they got muddy, and if this limited the amount of traffic they carried to a relatively small number of diehards then it’s great if they’ve been opened up to encourage more cycling by more people.

Even if a consequence is that for some of us our nice quiet rides get a bit busier and we don’t get that nice summer dust any more 😉

It would be interesting to see any figures to show if that’s actually been the case though.

I’ve been commuting on the ones around Birmingham all winter, before they were tarred and covered in grit the canals were unusable from Oct to March due to massive puddles.
The grit on them also means that you get grip even when its icey.

I’m kind of torn, tarmaccing makes them a lot less interesting to ride, but does open them up to more users and also commuting potential, so it’s better overall use, but could bring speeders and strava types, so potential conflict there.

I normaly ride the canal for about an hour to get to some trails, but my local canals are becoming much more sanitised so I’m more likely just to jump on the train rather than pedal on tarmac.. I’d just got my tyres and pressures perfect for variable broken tow path stuff as well.

Have a mix here, rough ground, tarmac, paving, concrete and newly laid gravel paths. I’d prefer rough ground but it got so bad here that it was turned into quagmires with the continuous rain which resulted in the council closing the path. I once rode the towpath to Merlin cycles and when I got there you couldn’t see the bike for mud… I don’t think they were too pleased when I took my bike into the shop!

It could be worse, it could be cobbles.

the canals paths round me get soo muddy in the winter so sounds like a good thing.

The TPT near to us was done a while back with a rubberised surface.
At first I was slightly against the idea as it removed the character, but after a number of years I can say it’s an improvement and definitely attracts more users and the lack of puddles is great.
You really notice the difference on a few sections which aren’t surfaced now – they are a mud fest at this time of year.