Lejog Route – roads to avoid or roads not to be missed!!

Three of us have opted to tackle Lands End to John o’ Groats via road in July this year. Our accommodation is already pre-booked having plotted a very rough route. What I need to do now is sit down and plot the exact route we are to take from each stopover.

Below is a list of our planned route and I would be glad to hear any recommendations of roads not to miss on any part of the route or likewise any that we should avoid like the plague!

Lands End to Okehampton
Okehampton to Bristol
Bristol to Clun
Clun to Warrington
Warrington to Kendal
Kendal to Moffat
Moffat to Dumbarton
Dumbarton to Fort William
Fort William to Inverness
Inverness to Tongue
Tongue to John o’ Groats

Your Moffat-Dumbarton-FW-Inverness route is almost all worth avoiding. It might look tempting on a map, but you’d be on some of the worst roads in Scotland for cycling.

No personal experience, but I met four JOGLEers in Clun on Tuesday. They basically said JOG-Tongue was a complete waste of time, not helped by torrential rain and 40mph headwinds.

As Druidh says Glasgow to Inverness is not a great choice for a LEJOG. But as you are going that way anyway …..

For Fort Wm – Inverness avoid the A82 as much as possible. I’d go the A830, B8004 then if you are on 32mm tyres or wider the forestry tracks up the west side of Loch Lochy. On the A82 to the N end of Loch Oich then the canal towpath (good surface) to Ft Augustus.

From Ft Augustus take the roads on the E side of Loch Ness. The B862 then turn right along the road past Loch Ashie.

Moffat to Dumbarton is actually not bad for cycling. Not very scenic as you reach Glasgow but flattish or easy gradients. Going north from Moffat the old A74 now B7076-A702-B7078 has very little traffic before Lesmahagow. From there to Glasgow on the A72 and A724 the traffic increases but not to any great extent and the roads are wide as they are the old main road before the motorway was built. It’s all local traffic the through traffic is on the M74.

From Glasgow city centre stay on the Clydeside to the SECC then follow Stobcross Rd (at the N side of the SECC) to Castlebank St, South St, then join the A814 at the west end of South St. The A814 takes you out to Bowling, 3 miles from Dumbarton.

The A814 is a better cycling road than the A82 from Glasgow to Bowling. It’s a 30mph while part of the A82 between Glw and Dumbarton is a 70mph.

Letojog.co.uk

The road to alrnaharrah is great. Very little traffic epic views pint at the craske inn 6 mile descent. Just try and avoid a9 as has already been said.

I would add to the call to avoid the A9, I’venever felt so unsafe on a bike before as I did on that in the wind, rain and lorry drivens constantly beeping thier horns at you despite the fact we were in the very small hard shoulder type bit! We ended up taking a de-tour to avoid any more of it!

I live in Shropshire, just off the A49, and see loads of Lejoggers/Joglers plying their way up and down it, looks like an awful way to spend a day.

More than happy to plot you a gpx from Clun to Warrington that avoids it, will probably take a little longer to ride but will be a much nicer experience.

Or if you insist on the A49, and I’m home, you’re welcome to stop for a cup of tea.

Have a look at our JOGLE route (Did it last week) – on the whole it was great (apart from getting lost around Loch Lomond 😉 )

We avoided most major A Roads and was a great choice TBH – adds a few miles on though!

http://lejog.foxyrider.co.uk/?page_id=1795 for Strava actual route

http://lejog.foxyrider.co.uk/?page_id=21 for our planned route

Neither the A82 or A9 are fun or safe but they can seem hard to avoid. Have a look at the Sustrans network. here It covers most of the country, albeit not by the most direct route. It provides well surfaced cycle paths adjacent to parts of your listed route. To avoid riding on the A82 itself, you could use the cycle track from Glasgow to Tarbet, Loch Lomond, although you would be back on the A82 up Glen Falloch to Crianlarich. Alternatively, go north from Glasgow up Glen Ogle to Killin and follow minor roads via Loch Tay and over to the NCN route near the A9. There are more options for quiet roads through Perthshire than Argyll.

Any route that starts in Lands End and finishes in John O Groats should be avoided – or vice-versa.

The A9 from JO’G was fine TBH and I don’t like big roads but avoided the rest of the A9!

We finished on Wednesday. Here’s our last day route. Tried to avoid the A9 enough (without making the day too long). The left turn before Helmsdale leads to a great road through the hills up to Thurso. Even saw about 200 deer running wild together.

http://app.strava.com/activities/9295885

Can recommend Poppy’s Cafe in Golspie if you want a stop.

Given you’re on an 11 day route your first two look relatively hard to me, mileage and climbing wise.

Having done it last year in the same amount of time my advice would be that only very rarely do you need to ride on A roads and the penalty for doing so is very big – you save little or nothing in mileage and open yourself up to a much much less enjoyable experience.

I’m based in Exeter and your options on days 1&2 are many. We took tiny country roads Penzance to Falmouth, ferry and then to st Austell, the A road to Lostwithiel then picked our way to Tavistock and over dartmoor to Exeter. The A386 Tavi to Okehampton is fine too (quite nice actually if memory serves) but you probably wouldn’t stray south to tavi anyway.

For what it’s worth I did my route planning along the way and my tool of choice (when we were looking at a bit of route where you actually need to keep a closer eye on navigation, which is itself not all the time by any means) was google maps (on an iPhone), generally using the walking option. This lets you confirm as you go that the back road options are often as short as the obvious routes, allows you to make decisions on the fly depending on how you feel, weather etc, and gives you something to think about.

Realise this isn’t a direct answer to your question but hope some of it might be of use anyway!

Luke

Your Moffat-Dumbarton-FW-Inverness route is almost all worth avoiding. It might look tempting on a map, but you’d be on some of the worst roads in Scotland for cycling.

I must be the only person to have cycled the A82 to FW, and not had a problem with it! I thought it was fine. We did take the minor roads out of FW, and then headed up the steep climb out of Ft Augustus to take the minor roads the other side of Loch Ness.

I echo the advice to miss the A49 as much as possible through Shropshire and Cheshire – it’s narrow and busy.

If the weather’s good, I’d go via Dartmoor rather than Okehampton – the climb is well worth it.

North of Carlisle, the old A74 is very handy, it’s parallel to the motorway and has very little traffic.

Through the Central Highlands, you could do a lot worse than Crieff-Aberfeldy-Tummel Bridge-Trinafour. You join NCN7 and have a short section of cycle track through Drumochter before picking up the old A9 through Dalwhinnie, Aviemore and then to Inverness.

North of Inverness, the old A9 through Beauly is a lovely route. When you get to Dingwall, head on to the Old Evanton Road to bypass the A9 a bit more too – and take the B9176 to Bonar Bridge.

Good stuff we did:
Yorkshire Dales and the little roads to the east of the M6 up past the lake district including the one that runs between north and southbound carriageways briefly.

Roads through Crianlarich and across to Glencoe, then up through Fort Augustus.

The route across to Tongue is a bit bleak and featureless – it is not pretty, but the North Coast of Scotland is lovely.

Try to avoid the dual carriageway bits of the A30 – it’s not very fun!

I’ve done LEJOG twice.

This route is sublime, quiet, challenging and takes the best route up to JOG (in my view of course)

Fantastic route there DavidB. Arran, Mull and Skye on a LEJOG? Great stuff!

Thanks for the feedback so far. Will definitely be avoiding the A9.
A82 is looking hard to avoid for us as we’re on 23mm road tyres so no chance of any forest tracks!

Any other suggestions would be welcome whilst I bury my head in my road atlas….

A82 is looking hard to avoid for us as we’re on 23mm road tyres so no chance of any forest tracks!

A July LEJOG puts you in peak Scottish school holiday season, which means the road will be full of inattentive drivers, probably towing caravans. It’s much quieter (IME) in June/ September. If you have to use it, I’d try to start early. Also, can you not fit 28mm tyres? I found the forest tracks ok on those as long as I kept my speed down. There’s also the canal towpath…

The route I suggested is OK on 23mm road tyres.

Ransos – 23mm road tyres is the most I can fit 🙁
I’ve MTB’ed along part of the route a couple of years back from Spean Bridge to Fort Augustus along the forest tracks and there’s no chance of my road bike making out of there intact.

Druidh – I’m already committed to heading up the west side having already booked our accommodation. Heading out of Inverness, if I’m heading for Beauly should I take the A862 then B9164 as we’re heading up the east side of Loch Ness via the B8852/B862?

Nick – have emailed you regarding the Clun – Warrington gpx file

mykaloon – no point in taking the B9164. The A862 is a decent road with good sight-lines for faster vehicles and you’ll also avoid two right-turns (off and back onto the A862).

I’m away at the moment, but home again on Wednesday, will do the route then.

Funnily enough I rode from north of Shrewsbury to Bishops Castle (couple of miles from Clun) on Friday, albeit with chunks of off road (and none of it on the A49) and then drove up the A49 north of Shrewsbury to the M56 at Warrington last night and thought of you (and the others that I see, although there were no cyclists on there yesterday), it’s a grim road even in a car.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/a82-to-fort-william-cycle-friendly

I’ve just finished my second LEJOG (with Amit up there^^^^)

I didn’t have a problem with the vast majority of the A82. We did pull over into laybys a couple of times to let coaches/lorries pass on twisty sections. Can’t recall a single REALLY dodgy overtake.