🚲 Festive London cycle ride: the nice way from Kennington to Covent Garden

You can cycle from Kennington in south London to Covent Garden in central London, entirely on quiet streets and protected cycle lanes.

The route is 4km long (2.5 miles) and makes use of Cycleway 5 and Cycleway 3.

If you find this video useful or you just enjoy watching it please remember to subscribe to the channel and hit the bell icon so you’re alerted to new videos, as I try to post new ones like it every week.

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You can see a digital map of the route and download a GPS/GPX file to use on whatever device or app you want here:

https://www.komoot.com/tour/1396357317?ref=wtd&share_token=aArz5BslpR2J9YSMpMRAGXPCrYa8rjO4ev3U45djHwNlg1VscA

And you can find a viewer-created and maintained map of all the London Cycle Routes videos here:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1h9Hxm57fPvZmcuSXajM_Wu0G0s6f_bs&ll=51.505213496092054%2C-0.1285238120117249&z=12

I also highly recommend the Safe Cycle London map for route planning, which is compiled by @SafeCycleLDN on twitter:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1XlpvN9R-Wg7qZHyezO8y-eVlftr4e0WX&hl=en&ll=51.516975804561284%2C-0.21828576419061996&z=11

Hello and welcome back to London cycle routes today I’ll be showing you how to cycle from Kennington in South London to Cent garden in central London this ride takes about 20 minutes and you can do the whole thing on quiet streets and protected cycle Lanes by public transport the same

Journey takes about 25 minutes so cycling can even save you a bit of time as well as being a really Pleasant route if you find this video useful or you just enjoy watching it then please don’t forget to subscribe to the channel as I try to post new videos just like it

Every week I’d also like to say a huge thank you to everyone who supports the channel on patreon if you’d like to contribute as well then you can find a link in the description below the video all right let’s get going so we’re starting in the Cent Center of Kennington outside the parade

Of shops on Kennington Road and we’re going to cut right down sancroft street sancroft street is pretty much always really quiet due to a maze of oneway streets in this area that mean it’s not a particularly useful through route for cars if you’re going anywhere North from Kennington by bike Sandro street is

Probably the street that you want to take it’s really nice and wide really low traffic and yeah just quite a pleasant way to connect to cycle wave 5 which will be joining in a second if I had one criticism of it I would say that some parts of it could probably do with

The resurface as it’s a little bit bumpy in Parts in a second we’re going to be turning on to Black Prince Road which is a bit of an enigma to me at a glance it always looks like the sort of street that should have a lot of traffic on it

It’s quite wide and it has all this cross-hatching in the road but in practice it’s always pretty quiet and pleasant to cycle on so you can relax along here and not worry too much if you were wondering about the name it was named after Edward of Woodstock the

Eldest son of Edward III who lived in Lambeth in the 14th century now I’ve got a festive surprise view here it’s uh a few dozen father Christmases or Santa Claus’s going for a bike ride through the back streets of Lambeth I have to admit I don’t know what that is but it’s

Good fun and seeing random things like that is exactly why I love living in this city there’s always something going on in fact in this video we’ll see quite a few things going on as we progress if you know what that festive bike ride was about then do let me know in the

Comments cuz I’m sure that someone on there probably watches this channel now if you’re a regular viewer then you will be familiar with this first bit of the route we’re following cycle wave 5 and that’s marked by the C5 symbols that are painted on the ground as well as these

Green and blue signs which you can see on poles now on the right behind those poles that’s actually a fil filtering Lane to help you join this Lane on Lambeth Road and use the crossing I used to recommend that people use that filtering Lane but I actually don’t

Anymore what’s happened is that the tree on the pavement next to the Lane has grown significantly while I’ve been doing these videos and it’s actually made the lane slightly unusable and actually a little bit dangerous as one of the branches now goes across the lane so if you’re tall or on an upright

Bicycle you might bang your head if you use it so I just recommend bypassing it there’s a cool hidden thing in this railway tunnel on Virgil street if you look on the walls you’ll see these little portraits and Landscapes they’re actually mosaics and they’re mosaics of illustrations from books by the poet

William Blake there are more in that tunnel off to the right as well now the reason they’re there is because when William Blake lived in central London Lambeth was actually quite Rural and Blake apparently liked to go walking in Lambeth Blake’s most famous poem Jerusalem contains the line there is a

Grain of sand in Lambeth that Satan cannot find which is one of the lines Illustrated on the walls of those tunnels they’re quite small but they’re definitely worth a little ride down there to have a look and you can stop for a pint in the pineapple Pub nearby

As well afterwards I do love public art stuff like that I think it really adds to the fabric of a town or city and these things aren’t expensive to commission but a little bit of public spending on that kind of stuff really does go a long way towards making places

Nice to live I think now we are about to head over Westminster Bridge which does have its own protected cycle Lanes which are separated from traffic by these really quite massive bards these Lanes have been subject of a bit of controversy and rightly so I think the design was apparently informed

By the police and the security services that were worried about vehicle attacks on pedestrians and they insisted on this particular design and I’m going to be honest it’s not a great design as you can see people regularly spill into the road and it can actually get a little

Bit dangerous so you do need to be really really switched on as you’re cycling down here and progress slowly definitely make sure that you’ve got one hand on your brakes and the other hand on your Bell as you go down there the situation is even worse in the opposite

Direction as people tend to to crowd into the cycle Lane in order to get pictures of Big Ben um in fact the lane on that side is at Peak time almost unusable and I do know a lot of people who choose to use the bus lane instead

Now if you’re wondering why there are so many police fans around and people with flags it’s because on the day that I filmed this which was a Saturday in December there was a large protest in central London Calling for a ceasefire in Gaza on that day which explains why

There are so many police around and also so many people carrying flags and placards um it also explains why there’s not that many people cycling in the cycle way as I think the police have actually been directing people away from it at the time I came down here although

I’m not sure it’s closed I did cycle pass quite a lot of police officers and nobody told me that I couldn’t go down this way so I think we’re okay but just so you know what’s going on just a reminder that if you enjoy this channel then make sure you hit subscribe so

You’re alerted to new videos as I post them I do try and post new videos every week sometimes I miss a week sometimes I do two a week I’m planning on doing two over Christmas so if you’re watching this around Christmas Eve which is when

I’m going to be posting it make sure you hit subscribe so you see the next one as well cuz it’s going to be even better and remember that you can download a map of the root in the description below the video and use that on whatever app or

Device you choose to use now we want to go off left here so there’s a little place to wait here where watching that little cycle traffic light and it lets us into this Advanced stop line here and we wait for another traffic light which

Goes green and then what we do is we go out this little filter Lane through seavoy place and onto seavoy Street this street goes around the back of the seavo hotel hence the name and there’s also an interesting link to the William Blake stuff we were talking about earlier

Which is that he died in Fountain Court which is actually now part of the SEO Hotel so pretty close to here there’s another little cut through here very similar to what we did down on the embankment which lets us through to this Advanced stop line and then we turn left

Now you should be really careful as you go out Wellington Street here as the cycle track isn’t super demarcated from the pavement and you’ll find a lot of tourists walking around it it’s particularly busy this time of year cuz there’s a lot of people out doing their

Christmas shopping as you go further up this street it can get a little bit busy and chaotic but this end of it is usually okay and we’re actually going to stop right here because we’ve made it to our destination Covent Garden Market is just on your left there I probably

Should have got about in shot but yeah we’ve made it all the way from Kennington up to Cent gardian with a little bit of a festive twist I think it was nice to see those far the Christmases as we went past thanks so much for watching guys a Merry Christmas

To all of those of you who celebrate and uh I’ll be posting another video again in a few days time so make sure you hit subscribe if you have already so you’re alerted to it it’s a festive double bill this year and thank you as always to

Those of you on the patreon for your contributions if anyone else is feeling particularly generous then you could find a link to the patreon in the description below the video where you can also download a map of the root I will see you guys again next time