Sky Ride coming to Birmingham

A clutch of Birmingham’s streets will be closed to traffic on Sunday 15th September as the Sky Ride comes to town.

The traffic-free cycling event will be starting at Cannon Hill Park – already a part of the popular Rea Valley cycle route, of course – and looping back to the centre of Birmingham via the Pershore Road, usually a busy, dangerous city street. Riders can join at any point along the route: a PDF map is available from the organisers.

This, the fourth such event in the city, will include local Olympic cyclist Jess Varnish as one of the participants; she was born in Bromsgrove and competed for a cycling club in Halesowen. Last year’s event starred another Olympian, Laura Trott.

Full details are available at the Sky Ride website.

Exploring the area

The canals and disused railways of the West Midlands have encouraged many locals to map their own favourite routes: after all, one of the most enjoyable aspects of cycling around Birmingham is discovering historic urban details. Push Bikes, Birmingham’s cycle campaign, produces an excellent set of ‘Urban Explorer’ routes that can be downloaded from their website. West Midlands Cycling catalogues off-road routes in each area, and the Birmingham Cycling Greenways site has lots of useful canal info.

Birmingham to Cannock Chase

Cannock Chase has long been the West Midlands’ cycling playground, with miles of forest tracks to explore. The quickest way to get there is by train to Hednesford or Rugeley, but you can also follow NCN 5 most of the way – it’s just 25 miles from the city centre, via Walsall and Brownhills.

Danger spots

Birmingham is laid out as a series of arterial roads (Pershore Road, Hagley Road, Stratford Road and so on) which cross the Middleway ring road on their way to the city centre. The roundabouts are known as Circuses, presumably because they’re regularly frequented by clowns. There was once an inner ring road, the infamous ‘concrete collar’ of the Queensway: this was partly dismantled in 2002, but much still remains as a fast motor road.

These busy main roads are famously cycle-hostile and cyclists will need no encouragement to stay away from them when possible. Belgrave Middleway, to the south of the centre, is particularly troublesome – the Gooch Street junction is notorious, despite the cycle crossing. Ladywood Circus, to the west, is another blackspot: the City Council is proposing to add traffic lights and new cycle paths.

Five Ways roundabout (on the Middleway) and Lancaster Circus (on the Queensway) have cycle underpasses which are a must for staying in one piece. Elsewhere, you can sometimes avoid the roundabouts with cut-throughs on local streets: for example, Bordesley Circus can be bypassed via Adderley Street and Kingston Road, or along the Grand Union Canal past Camp Hill Locks.

Solihull to Birmingham by canal

The Grand Union Canal connects Birmingham with the outskirts of Solihull – and if you keep going, Warwick and London. However, until you reach the locks at Camp Hill, the surface is uneven, and its situation in a wooded cutting means it can be muddy.