Last weekend Mary and I took the opportunity to cycle from Bristol to Bath along the eponymous track. I had heard much about this, now famous, route from Sustrans publications and had been keen to try it.
We parked at Mary’s sister’s house, and having left Nathan with his cousins for a sleepover, set out on a wild afternoon for Bath. I used the mapping on Sustrans website to help plan our route through the city.
Bristol has been recently designated as the UK’s first cycling city and it’s easy to see why. The city centre traffic is atrocious, so, much investment has been made to make it easy to cycle. Every set of lights has advance stop line for bikes. There are loads of cycle routes down quiet back streets which are no-through routes for cars, or have cycle contra-flow. Signposting is good and with a quick browse of routes we easily found our way to the Trinity Road access point for the long distance route.
View Bristol & Bath Railway Path in a larger map
Once on the railway path the traffic is left behind. Smooth tarmac leads along an ex-railway through the heart of the city, out through the suburbs and down into the Avon valley. At one point the route is shared by some railway enthusiasts who have laid track and, I guess, run a service in summer time. There’s a bunch of graffiti suggesting path users boycott their station and cafe in protest over the shared use, and carbon emissions from the coal! I’d be happy to share a few traffic free routes round here with railway enthusiasts if it meant GETTING routes! I also suspect the carbon footprint of building 14miles of cycle path, dwarfs what the steam train produces and is way less than what the cars in Bristol’s traffic jams produce a day.
On the outskirts of Bath, the railway path ends and we were led via the canal tow path towards the centre of that city. Again good signposting for National Cycle Route 4 guided us into the heart of Bath. We were staying overnight at the Hilton next to Pulteney Bridge – which doesn’t have its own carpark: the couple checking in before us, were told it was about £20 for overnight parking in the public car park under the hotel. We felt very smug when the concierge kindly locked our bikes in his left luggage room for nothing.
A quick change into dry clothes and we hit Jamie’s restaurant for a well deserved dinner.
Next morning, after a great breakfast at the hotel, and with a sunny and now dry sky, we headed back to Bristol. In the sunshine, and on a Sunday morning, the path was a lot more heavily used, folks strolling, riding bikes, pushing toddlers and walking dogs – so not a fast route… The surface is certainly suitable for road bikes with thin tyres, but it would be unsociable to attempt to average more than 10-15mph.
Distance covered: 17 miles each way. Total Ascent: < 50m
