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Save me from riding to Stone and back 5 times!
Have totally failed to put aside enough time to plan a route, so I turn to you in my hour of need.
Starting Saturday morning, 100ish miles mostly offroad in the Malverns, 1 night wild camping around halfway, preferably near a pub. I think that's all my wishlist covered.
Does anybody have a route similar to this? A gpx or even some rough instructions would be most appreciated!
Ta luv
I think you`ll be lucky to get 100 miles. The whole thing is probably only ten miles from end to end. You could go back and forth 10 times?
Why the Malverns? An hour to the west and there would be much better long distance routes around.
Trailwagger +1
as above, you'll not find a 100 miler here. Not without at least half of that being on road.
Id be looking over towards Doethie/Llyn Briane/Rhayder for a 100 mile off road route.
Even the Black Mountains you'd be hard pressed even going up and down each finger and valley.
"Gravel" bike (urrggh, cant believe I wrote that) off/on road there's some lovely stuff around Worcs and Heref borders. A loop of Bredon hill taking in tour over the top for example. Village pubs such as The Queens in Elmley, Crown in Kemerton.
Around the lanes on the West side of the Malverns with an off road end to end. Lots of pubs. Little corners for wild camping not far from pubs (Brewers Arms, The Chase, Malvern Hills Hotel, The Wyche etc etc)
You could probably do 100 miles on the Malverns if you did every track on them but, as said, it wouldn't make for a great 100 miles.
You could link up with the Worcestershire Way to add some miles though.
depends on what you want to achieve, but you could in theory head from Malvern across the vale to Bredon, then up into the Cotswolds, then south down towards stroud, on towards berkeley and the severn path, across the severn bridge, then back up through the Forest of dean. A large proportion of which can be done off road.
The Malverns isn't a great place to ride, the dammned trail goes up and down constantly and makes your legs ache. And most of it is footpath as well.
There's a contour route that doesn't vary a great deal, flows nicely and is wholly on bridleway and a new permissive path link where previously it did follow a bit of footpath.
If you go around riding the ridge (which is legally only passable on foot under open access permission), then yes, bring your A-game legs.
19k, 540m of climbing:
Thanks for getting back, it's my mate who suggested the Malverns. We're based in Stoke, anywhere within the same radius would be fine I think.
Also a loop is preferable
'only' 66 miles, but I'm sure there are plenty of extras you could add in to get the distance up.
That one looks good
martinhutch, we ended up doing most of your suggestion (ran out of time on day 2 so trimmed it to about 55miles) and it was excellent, so thanks very much. Will definitely be doing it again soon! Will look for a flatter campsite however, rain and gathering dark forced us to camp on about a 15% slope 😀
Nice one!
I live at the foot of the Malverns and while it is great for a quick blast (when it's not busy) I agree with others that you need to look elsewhere for longer rides. My first port of call would be mid Wales. Have you ever considered the Trans-Cambrian route?
Malvern miles are worth two miles anywhere else just because it's nothing but steep ups and steep downs.
Stigheed, yes I've seen the Trans-Cambrian route, looks great, intend to do it over 3 days. Hopefully this summer.