🚲 London’s north—south cycling spine: Gospel Oak to Kennington

You can cycle from Gospel Oak in north London to Kennington in south London, entirely on quiet streets and protected cycle lanes.

The route is 10.4km long (6.5 miles) and makes use of protected lanes on streets like Midland Road and Gower Street as well as the Grafton Road LTN in Camden and other quiet streets.

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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/1428652602?ref=wtd&share_token=aHyLWjbeLF7K3Ui1b3CaPkJFItqYsbtw6XDvM9GHe82d9ifZZB

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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 gospel Oak in North London to Kennington in South London this ride takes about 40 minutes and you can do the whole thing on quiet streets and protected cycle Lanes by public transport the same

Journey also takes around 40 minutes but requires a change of line or a walk so cycling is a great option to make this journey 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 our patreon page 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 outside gospel Oak station and we’re going to duck straight into Oak Village I love the little apartment blocks on the left there recently built and they were designed by one of my favorite Architects Peter Barber as we turn left into Grafton Road just note the little

Blue signs which sent us this way those used to point the wrong way but they now point the right way after I flagged it up in an earlier video It’s a small thing but it’s really nice to see one change to this route since we last came this way is this improved pedestrian

Crossing here it looks like a nice design and should help make the whole area just a bit more livable for our purposes though this filter which we’re passing through now is the most important thing on Grafton Road this was installed a couple of years ago as a

Trial and has now been made permanent and the effect has been to really quieten down this street and to turn it into a really nice cycle way with very little in the way of traffic combined with two other closures on nearby Queen’s Crescent and Ragland Street as

Well as a timed School Street which is a timed closure during school pickup and drop off hours effectively peak time for driving commuting the whole area has basically been turned into a low traffic neighborhood the burrow with in Camden has been a little bit slower at rolling

Out ltns compared to bars like Lamberth or Islington or Hackney but this is a really good one and if they can replicate this model elsewhere in the bough I think that they’ll be on to a winner one area where Camden really excels compared to other borers is in

Rolling out protected cycle lanes for a big chunk of this journey starting in a moment we’re going to be mostly riding on protected lanes that have been put in by Camden we’re then going to pick a quiet route through back streets to the river temps then use the protected cycle

Ways along the river Temps and then pick another back street route through the northern part of Lambeth until we get to Kennington today’s route is a reasonably long one and cuts all the way from North London through to Inner South London and I think it’s a great example of how

Cycling infrastructure in inner London has really improved we’re basically going to be cutting across the very center of the capital and we’re going to be doing it with the greatest of these there really aren’t many spots that we’ll be going through where I would be worried at all and I think pretty much

Anyone could cycle this routee at the moment we’re cycling on these stepped cycle tracks on Royal College Street um unfortunately our way was slightly blocked here but it seems like it was for a good cause which was trimming a tree um those step tracks are interesting you can see they’re raised

Up from the main carriageway by a step which is why they have that name compared to this section just coming up here on the right where the cycle Lane is at the carriageway level but protected by by uh a protective concrete island or light protection in some cases

Now what I didn’t realize until recently was that Ste cycle tracks where the carriageway is raised up are actually more expensive to build than traditional protection the reason for that is apparently because when you raise the level of the carriageway to build a step track you also have to do things like

Raise the utility shafts at the same time so things like telecoms covers drains these have to be moved up and you can see we passed a good Fair few of these so all that work can actually get a bit fiddly and it can all Mount up and

Get a little bit pricey this means that buyers tend to only build step tracks when they need their advantages and the big advantage of Step tracks is that they are a little bit narrow and easier to fit in than standard segregation so you can put them on a narrower Road

Where there isn’t necessarily as much space for a traditional protected barrier you get a higher usable width if you want to see a good example of a step track to see what I’m talking about you can see one here now each one of these drain covers that we pass would have had

To have been raised up when they were constructed by contrast the cheapest form of segregated cyc Lane is wand protection and that’s probably why we’re seeing so much of it in London where tfl doesn’t have very much money at the moment and they’re able to roll out

Protected Lanes kind of at speed maybe not as fast as we’d like but they’ve made a lot of progress and doing it on a limited budget it’s time to do a bit of sightseeing on the right is the Francis Creek Institute which is the biggest biomedical research facility

In Europe on the left is some panr station which is the London Terminus of the Midland Railway which sends trains up to Sheffield Nottingham and other cities you can also get the Eurostar from there to Paris Amsterdam and Brussels on the right is the British Library one of the largest libraries in

The world and the UK’s copyright Library which gets a copy of every book published in the country they also put on some really interesting exhibitions at the time of recording there is an exhibition there about fantasy novels haven’t been yet but I intend to check it out because they’re usually pretty

Good the street that we’re on now Jud street is very quiet as it’s closed with the junction uh used to road that we came in we’re going to Bear right into Lee Street here and then turn left onto March one street and right onto Tavo place where we’ll find cycle Lanes again

This might seem a little bit complicated to anyone who knows the area well you could just keep going straight down judge Street and turn on to Tavo place but the reason I’ve done it like this is that you’re technically not allowed to turn right from Jud Street onto Tavo

Place and also going from monster is a much more comfortable turn anyway Tav toop Place does have protected cycle Lanes on it although there’s quite a lot of building work and development going along on this street so sometimes the protection is removed I think to make space for hgvs scaffolding that kind of

Thing that shouldn’t be a permanent situation but generally it’s pretty comfortable to ride on as it is anyway also if you look up ahead here you’ll see a work crew hard at work they’re actually in the process of installing new protection on the cycle Lanes you can see these brand new concrete

Sleepers that have been put into the road which I think are much more substantial and also just generally a little bit better looking than what was there before I think they’ve been working their way from GA Street backwards in the direction that we just came so they’ll probably get as far as

Jud Street I think one interesting point to make given the discussion we had earlier about Ste cycle tracks is that I believe Camden actually consulted on putting stepped cycle tracks like the ones we’re currently on down have a stock place but in the end they seem to have gone for that concrete sleeper

Protection so I do wonder whether or not they just looked at it and said well we can get better or just as good protection for uh less cost by just using these concrete sleepers than if we’ done the step tracks I don’t know for sure but it’s a guess and if anyone

Has a better idea let me know in the comments below these cycle Lanes along GA Street are pretty good as you can see there are some bits that do lack protection and although it generally feels pretty safe it would be better to see the protection extended a bit I

Think it does sometimes feel a little bit open although there are usually so many cyclists on here that it’s not so bad there are a couple of downsides to it there are actually a couple of loading bays in the cycle track and when they’re used you often have to go out

Onto the road to get around aart vehicle um it’s not a great design and it’s obviously a compromise that the council has done there to keep front door loading access to some buildings while having the tracks in on what is a relatively Narrow Street you also just

Want to keep an eye out on the Junctions on this street as cars do have a tendency to turn across people who are cycling um I’ve seen quite a few near misses here and I wouldn’t want anyone watching this video to be one of them

It would also be great to just see some wand segregation even added to the cycle Lane approaching this bike box here as it can feel a little bit exposed when traffic’s heavier now I do pay close attention to the way that I crossed High hoben there as it is a little bit

Confusing it’s kind of counterintuitive you have to go left and then do a hard right into endel Street to get there this section of the route on endell street and Bow Street is probably the weakest section I think as you can see there are only a few cars around because

Only a few people at any one time think that that’s a good way to get around streets like this a stone Strow from Covent Garden but it does only take a few to make the whole thing feel a little bit chaotic one Dynamic that I have noticed

Is that because there are three zebra Crossings which are all in heavy use quite close to one another along this stretch of Street you do tend to end up with quite quite long cues of cars here even though there aren’t actually that many cars per hour passing through uh

Because they all have to wait at the zebra Crossing honestly I think it would probably make sense just to pedestrianized this whole area because even with the wide Pavements and the zebra Crossings there’s just not enough space for all the people who want to walk around here at the very least it

Should be filtered to remove through traffic from it I think although Wellington Street is closed at that point that we just just cycle through there are still a few through routes through that area and quite a lot of drivers use them to cut through around the West end it’s not an ideal cycle

Route but unfortunately it’s a really useful way to get from those protected Lanes on GA Street to this protected Lane here cycleway three on the embankment of the river temps you can see we use that suroy street cut through and that is I think probably the quickest way and still a fairly

Comfortable way to link between those two stretches of protected Lane that cycle link also works in the opposite direction when you’re cycling up survo street so if you’ve ever wanted to know how to connect those two little bits of protected Lane that’s the way to do it

And I think it works out pretty nicely in practice just do watch out for traffic and expect frustration on endell street and Bow Street cuz they’re not fantastic now note the construction work on the left and the right there that is part of the temp’s tideway project or

The so-called superu for London and uh we’ll be getting some new public space and a redesigned cycle Lane there this year when that’s finished I will come past and I will show it to you and give you my thoughts on it in the meantime though as we approach Big Ben do watch

Out for social media influencers fluttering into the road as they are a hazard maybe we need some sort of bespoke street sign here just to warn people about that as it is a very common occurrence unfortunately there’s no relief on the tourist standing in the cycle Lane front as we turn left onto

Westminster bridge in fact it does get worse these Pavements are dangerously overcrowded as you can see this is probably the worst I’ve seen it actually but it’s not too different from what you might often see when you come down here honestly I’ve been told of a lot of

People who are simply choosing to ride in the bus lane because these cycle lanes are getting kind of unusable and it’s really not great and kind of unsafe both for people riding and also for people walking on there there’s also those ice cream Vans and pedicabs which

Park in the bus lane and make it also not a particularly great option there’s actually a dedicated police operation to try and shift that ice cream van but they don’t seem to have been successful so far I guess we’ll see if they make any progress at the very least I think

That those Pavements should be significantly wider and I think there’s probably a good case for pedestrianized Westminster Bridge as well just given how many people there are it’s one of the world’s most popular tourist attractions and everyone who wants to see it is crammed onto the Pavements and

Stepping out into the cycle Lane it’s not a good situation for anybody to be in really obviously whatever solution is found would have to be a good one for the buses that use that route as well including buses serving St Thomas’s Hospital which are really important so it’s not a straightforward question but

I don’t think the current setup there is really working at all now we’re going to pick a quiet back street route through North Lamberth to get to Kennington and just a reminder that if you need a bit of help with wayf finding here you can

Always download a map of the route in a GPX file and use it on whatever app or device you use it’s a standard format and you can find a link to that in the description below the video while you’re there make sure you give the video a

Like as it does help boost it in the YouTube algorithm and help other people find it and uh if you’re not already subscribed to the channel do just make sure you hit that subscribe Button as it is free and all it does is make sure that my videos appear on your YouTube

Homepage more often so you don’t miss videos I try and post new ones every week I also just want to say a massive thank you to all viewers who support the channel on patreon you are awesome if you like the word the channel is doing and you’re feeling particularly generous

Then you can find a link to the patreon page in the description as well where you can Chuck us a few quid to keep the channel going thanks again to all of those of you who do already now people have been asking me to tell them roughly when these videos

Were recorded I believe this one was recorded in December on a Friday although I have to admit I didn’t have the time on my camera set properly so I can’t tell you exactly but yeah it’s certainly a winter weekday afternoon if that’s helpful I know people like to

Know that so they can judge what the traffic is going to be like when they do their journey and I can say that I think most of the traffic you’ve seen on this video is fairly typical we’re either in low traffic neighborhoods which are quiet all the time or we’re on protected

Lanes and uh yeah you won’t see any more traffic on streets like this certainly the only bit that does get a bit busier is the endell street Bow Street section which I think gets quite a bit busier around sort of theater time uh or time when people are going out for drinks in

The evening there can be a lot more pedestrians a lot more cabs around there so do watch out for that little bit but paradoxically it’s probably actually a little bit better at commuting times in the morning which is unusual for London but I’ve had pretty good experiences

Down there around that time of day now we’ve made it to Kennington cross so this is where we’re going to end the video do let me know in the comments what you think of that I think it’s a pretty good route and really showcases a really decent north south Corridor that

We’ve now got running all the way from gospel Oak down to South London and frankly you can go further south you can cross here and we could go all the way to peek him if we wanted to I’ll definitely have more videos heading that way in the future so make sure you hit

Subscribe to see those thanks again for watching and I look forward to hearing from all of you in the comments as usual see you again next time