Cycling the West Country
I’ve been trying to build more confidence in bike touring the UK. I want to reduce my holiday costs, stay local, and learn more about the country I live in. There is much more to the UK than London.
I’ve found cycling here more intimidating than mainland Europe. The cycleways are less developed, country roads a bit scary, the terrain more varied, and the topography more challenging. The weather is also shite. But the upside is a beautiful world outside my doorstep.
To get my feet wet, I’ve started doing a couple of day biking tours in the Southwest of England, affectionately known as West Country.
To the North-East is the Cotswolds area, a collection of villages with cottages made of white Cotswold stone. It has increasingly become prey to rich outsiders buying up second homes, most recently Jay-Z and Beyonce. The biggest city in the region is Bristol, which has a famous University as well as a strong aviation industry.
As we go deeper South and Southwest near Frome, we come across the Cheddar gorge; home to England’s oldest discovered prehistoric human, and cave aged cheddar. To the South, we have the Dartmoor National park, which is a breathtaking wooded area with a crazy microclimate. Near the coast, we have Devonshire, a holiday beach area with most of the property being holiday homes or rents.
West Country is moderately hilly, and gets worse the more Southwest you go. From my experience, hillier areas have better views, but you pay for it in exercise. It requires relatively moderate fitness when it comes to English bike touring. It is not as hard as the wild fens of Wales or the Yorkshire dales. But, it is harder than the flatter areas of the English Midlands, like in Cambridge or Norfolk.
So how do you cycle this?
First, a comfy bike. My bike is a Spa Cycles Wayfarer, which is a steel touring bike. Steel is less stiff (and therefore more comfortable) than alumiunium road bikes. They are also designed to take load, so you can take your tent and pyjamas. Through discussions with tourers and experimentation, I’ve found that the biggest predictors of comfort are big tyres (mine are currently 38mm, but I want to increase it to 45mm), as well as a broken-in leather saddle.
How do you get to West Country? Whilst the train networks are good from London, trains have gotten really expensive. From a pure variable cost point of view, it’s now cheaper to take a car. Unfortunately, since I am 6ft1, my bike frame is pretty big. So, I have to disassemble the front wheel, pack it into my 2013 Volkswagen Up (a small hatchback), and then drive. I then have to rebuild it at the location.
I typically optimise for routes with low traffic, using this tool. This weekend, I cycled from the Cotswolds area to the river Severn. I passed a beautiful Canal near Frampton on Severn. I chose this route because it was part of the Great Mercian Way, a famous tour that runs from Salisbury to Liverpool.
Last month, I had a couple of quick attempts at the Devonshire hills, cycling from Bantham to Salcombe. I found this terrain especially challenging, with some farm hills coming up to 12% incline for several hundred metres. There is a real nice cycle lane that runs from Marlborough straight to Salcombe, which has great ice cream!
