Thinking of doing this with a mate & was wondering if anybody on here has done it? Any advice on route, stopover accommodations as were planning to do over a day or two.

Any info would be great.

Thanks & happy trails

yea, last year. Took 3 days from Wolverhampton along the grand Union. Nice weather until a rainstorm on the last morning. Just camped al fresco. Pedestrian free on the whole but nose to tail boats from Milton Keynes into London. Nice ride though. There’s a rough section before Braunston but other than that its gravel or smooth-ish grass all the way. Took my hardtail which was nice but you could do it on a hybrid/road bike with big n soft tyres.

Facebook reminded me last week that I did it in 2013.

I did it from where I live though, Leamington, so missed out maybe 25 miles from Birmingham.
Did about 60 miles each day.

I did it over two days, staying in Milton Keynes halfway.

It was fairly pleasant, moderately boring, quite hard going at times.
Been thinking about doing it again recently but I’d want to do it camping.

In the winter some sections round here (milton Keynes) are muddy misery South of mk to London its generally better, tho I’ve not ridden far north of mk

If a Brummie ever tells you that Birmingham has more canals than Venice (and they will!) just remind them that B&Q in Sutton Coldfield has more paint than the Cistine Chapel.
It’s not about quantity…

As long as you do it from April onwards it should be fine, do it now or in winter it’d be a miserable muddy slogfest. Don’t underestimate the fatigue of a flat route, there’s almost no freewheeling so you’re pedalling all the time.

Don’t underestimate the fatigue of a flat route, there’s almost no freewheeling so you’re pedalling all the time

Very good point.
I slept well!

Did it last year over 3 days – stayed in Birmingham night before and Leigton Buzzard mid ride. In my opinion there are much better cycling routes in the UK. foolishly I was expecting to meander through lots of canal side towns and industrial heritage which in the middle section there was very little – just flat countryside. On a positive plenty of pubs to keep dehydration and boredom at bay. There are a couple of sections where my average riding speed was less than walking pace. The fishing competion with over hundred anglers and all their tackle spread over the towpath was a particular highlight!

In summary, glad I scratched the itch but there are loads of other rides I should have used my precious 3 days on. Wouldn’t do it again but would get the train to Milton Keynes and do the ride back to London on a mid week day.

I’ve done Warwick to London in a day. We were going to do it on rigid singlespeeds but a couple of test rides convinced us that we were going to get seriously beaten up, so in the end we used short travel full sussers. Ride time was 10 hours, 12 hours including stops for the 123 miles. It was only the first 30 odd miles that were rough, the rest was pretty well surfaced. We chose to do it in August, to get a decent length of day and because the grass would have been cut – some of the unsurfaced sections can be quite overgrown. Being flat you expect it to be easy, but we found the lack of variation to be very wearing. It was a great day!

Not helpful to your plans…. But we did quite a lot of towpath on our JOGLE route. Once the first hour of novelty had worn off I found them very frustrating and would avoid in the future.
Car free but quiet sections were slow going, good surface tended to result in lots of (not aware) pedestrians, the stop start was a annoying,and the gates…..!
Give me quiet country lanes or offroad any day.

I have walked it on a D of E expedition took us 6 days, 38 years ago. We wild camped by the canal side. Not sure I’d want to camp by the towpath nowadays.

I did it with a mate a couple of years ago from Stafford to London. It was something I wanted to do and sort of glad we did it but I would not do it twice. When the paths are good it is great but the sections between conurbations were generally pretty awful and descended into slogs along really rubbish paths pretty quickly. We stayed in a hotel at the canal side which was excellent and then on the second day it properly honked down and it became even harder. Got to London soaked through, late, in the dark, GPS about to die and quite knackered.

As others have said, there are better routes but if it is an itch you need to scratch then good luck. I did start a thread on it at the time so you might be able to search for it. I think I did a summary after the ride.

If you are interested I could dig out the stats and the hotel we stayed at. I think it was about 160 miles and we did it over 2 days.

Dogsby

Don’t underestimate the fatigue of a flat route, there’s almost no freewheeling so you’re pedalling all the time.

I’ve done the Cheshire Ring canal route (100 mile circular) on my CX and yes, it can be very wearing. Don’t even think of doing towpaths on a weekend, it’ll be unbelievably slow and crap, constantly dodging walkers, dogs, anglers etc.

A non-school-holiday weekday after a period of dry weather though and it’ll be a decent couple of days out.

It’s a great route to shatter ones romantic notions of bike packing. Really tough to find pitches. The best one we found outside of MK resulted in us being shouted at by a really angry farmer.