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Ride to Dudley/ Coventry

6 Jul 2015
by gogledd
in forum cycle.travel
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Hello. Last weekend I used cycle.travel for the first time to plan a route to Coventry - the first leg was to Dudley with an overnight stop at friends, then on to Coventry to watch my rugby league team at Butts Park.

I have to say it was a fabulous experience. I rode over three quarters of the ride virtually trafic free. Even in Telford and Shifnall I was directed onto cycle paths and quieter roads. Again on Sunday with plenty of time I too a route using the canal system through Birmingham then quieter urban roads through Small Heath and out once more onto rural roads. I was amazed that right up to 6km from Coventry I was still riding on rural roads with farms and fields as company.

I only had a couple of minor problems one within 2km from home. The route took me out of Wrexham along Sontley Road and tried to direct me down a small unmade road. Fortuantely I am familiar with this road and realistically it is a bridleway and not really suited to touring bikes. It is extrelemely muddy and only to be attempted on a mountain bike. Some of the canal towpaths were also a little difficut to negotiate with the only hard surface a little wider than a tyres width.

The ride throgh Birmingham was facinating and I was aware that it was going to be a shared path, so I was expecting progress to be slower than normal.

Many thanks for this fabulous resource I'll be sharing it with friends.

Comments

Thu 9 Jul 2015, 18:11

Really glad it found you a good route! And thanks for the heads-up on Kiln Lane – I’ve corrected it to a track in the OpenStreetMap source data, so cycle.travel will stop preferring it next time I pull data down from OSM (should be in a week or too).