🚲 The best way to cycle to Richmond Park from Surbiton station without traffic

You can cycle from Surbiton in south west London to Richmond Park entirely on quiet streets and protected cycle lanes.

The route is 5km long (3.1 miles) and makes use of Cycleway 29 and Cycleway 30 into and out of Kingston town centre.

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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/2285472354?share_token=aP1uz0V2MPue7utJezvMlmWpSB3RPfnro2P1wP8TzryRDi2yup&ref=wtd

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 Roots today I’ll be showing you how to cycle from Serban in southwest London to Richmond Park this ride takes just 20 minutes and you can do the whole thing on quiet streets and protected cycle lanes by public transport the same trip takes more like 40 minutes so cycling is a great option this route might also be useful for people wanting to get the train to Richmond Park to go riding as Serverton is one of the closest stations on the Southwest Mainline 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 everybody who supports the channel on Patreon if you’d like to contribute to then you can find a link in the description below the video all right let’s get going so we’re starting on Claremont Road just outside Railway Station and the first thing that we want to do is dive left into the Crescent here for the first part of this route we’re going to be following these green and blue signs for cycleway 29 today’s route runs entirely on infrastructure delivered by Kingston Council some of it is quite good some of it is less good and we’ll talk about that when we get there it’s a pretty good start though the Crescent is very quiet and in a second we’re going to get put onto a decent two-way protected cycle track which carries us alongside this main road without having to interact with traffic after a bit of a barge at the junction coming up using a toucan crossing to get over the road we return to cycling on the main carriageway on Serban Crescent serverton Crescent looks like it should be busy but it’s not thanks to a bus gate at the end of it which means that only buses and bikes can use it as a through route as a result you can see it’s pretty clear of cars and you can see the bus gate sign coming up here now Kingston is far from a terrible place to cycle it was one of the three outer London bursers given lots of cash to transform their streets as part of the mini Holland program the others being Walam Forest and Enfield but there are some issues with the approach that Kingston has taken I think which are pretty evident on this street you’ll be cycling on a perfectly good cycle track and then it will suddenly turn into a shared pavement that’s fine up to a point or in extreme circumstances where no other design is viable but Kingston’s engineers reach for it as a solution far too often and the result is like this where the cycle track is extremely stop and start and you find yourself on shared space sections far too often that’s not great for people on bikes it’s a bit confusing but it’s also not great for people trying to walk on the pavements either i think this street that we’ve been traveling on is a pretty good example of it but there are some absolute horror shows later in the video that I will flag when we get to them the important thing of course is that you’re separated from motor traffic and that the route is safe which I think is the case or I wouldn’t recommend it but in the meantime my advice is to remember to ride gently and be aware of pedestrians when you’re on these shared spaces i don’t want to be too negative we’re currently on Kingston Town Centers in a ring road and it’s great that we can ride safely along here without dealing with traffic and reasonably comfortably if every other town center in London had something like this it would certainly be a good start and there were also loads of low traffic and segregated routes around here some of which are quite a bit better than this one but the design doesn’t quite keep pace with some of the more recent cycle schemes you might have seen elsewhere in London and in other videos on this channel it would be great to see these lanes eventually get a rebuild to properly segregate people cycling from people walking and to just generally be more compliant with the latest best practice when designing infrastructure like this now in a moment we’re going to be breaking from cycleway 29 and joining cycleway 30 by turning right down London Road when we enter London Road don’t forget to keep an eye out for Kingston’s iconic red telephone boxes a sculpture by artist David Mack called Out of Order which you can see right here it’s been a symbol of Kingston since it was installed in 1989 and is I think a lovely example of how public art can improve an area and become well-loved london Road itself is functionally a culdeac so without through traffic is a pleasant place to cycle it would probably be a bit nicer if some of the curbside was reallocated from parking to other uses like outdoor dining and planting and the whole street opened up a bit c30 does quickly move off the carriageway though and into a segregated cycle track like the one we’re on now which has much the same issues as the previous ones with the track giving up at various points like here but overall if you can deal with that it’s a really useful link certainly a lot better than cycling on that busy road to our right and is also despite the fact that this was filmed in the midm morning been used by a number of other people as well do watch out for the lamp posts and other poles which are occasionally situated in the path though especially if you’re doing this route at night you don’t want to cycle into them without seeing them you should be especially careful on this route as you approach bus stops as the cycles track basically stops and turns into a shared space at points like here it would be much better for the cycle track to pass behind the bus stop shelter like on a bus stop bypass um but that hasn’t been done here partly I think due to space constraints the section up ahead here turns into a shared pavement for an extended period and is an absolute dog’s breakfast it’s always outside petrol stations I find that you’ll get the worst infrastructure um I guess because the design of petrol station 4courts relies on having two crossover driveways in quick succession with vehicles regularly turning in and out of them things only get worse though on this first section of Kingston Hill here it’s not so bad in the other direction where there’s a cycle lane at pavement level but in this direction it’s just a pavement with cycle symbols painted on it uh you can see that this wasn’t re-engineered because they didn’t want to move the mature trees there and that’s understandable but the result was a very very bad section there is then a slightly better cycle track and then another very poor section very briefly before it does actually turn into quite a decent cycle lane it actually runs quite well all the way up past Kingston University to where the road meets the A3 and is actually pretty good in both directions um the bad section is just here and then after that it turns pretty good for the rest of the trip i do have some plans for videos that will show the cycle lane all the way up to uh to where it stops uh so do hit subscribe on the channel if you’re keen to see that today we are obviously just going to Richmond Park so we’re going to get to the gate of the park there and uh yeah you’ll see that it it basically continues like this for the whole route and I’d say it’s really not too bad now verging on actually quite good it’s a shame about those weak points that we went past and I wish that Kingston Council would fix those though I understand the physical and political constraints of doing so but even with those bits it is miles better going on this than having to cycle up Kingston Hill without a cycle lane if you couldn’t tell from the video this is actually quite a long and sustained hill and uh yeah this makes a huge difference so well done to the council for getting this installed i personally really dislike cycling up hills and having my own protected cycle lane makes such a difference on them even more than on the flat because it’s actually less the hill that’s horrible I think and more the feeling that traffic is revving up behind you and about to close past you that you get when you’re cycling on the carriageway whereas you can take your own time when you’ve got your own segregated lane like this we haven’t had much history in this video but I do have a little piece of it for you here coming up on our right directly opposite where we’re going to be turning off is a culdeac called Warren Road we’re not going to be cycling up it today but at the entrance is a memorial plaque to General Dwight D eisenhower who actually lived at Telegraph Cottage on Warren Road from 1942 until 1945 while he was the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe the original building burned down in the 80s so there’s not much to see but one was rebuilt in its place and is now a private residence now the first opportunity to get into Richmond Park is coming up on our left here and we’re going to take it you want to turn left into ladder style ride which is just here after the zebra crossing this is a short culde-sac that takes you straight into Richmond Park via this gate here which is just obscured by this van today depending on where you want to go in this very big park you could keep going further up Kingston Hill and actually enter at Robin Hood Gate but you can also get to Robin Hood Gate traffic free within the park by turning right here and just going straight but yeah here we are we’ve made it in just 20 minutes without having to deal with traffic at all i hope that’s useful for someone i know a lot of people like to go leisure or sports cycling in Richmond Park and Serban is right on the main train line in from places like Surrey so I’m sure someone will make use of it do hit subscribe on the channel if you enjoyed that as I post similar videos every week including ones to and from Richmond Park sometimes and do let me know in the comments what you make of the route and what you’d like to see in terms of future videos perhaps another to the park from somewhere else or maybe something completely different please do leave a like if you enjoyed the video as it boosts it on YouTube’s algorithm and helps other people find it and I’d also like to once again thank everyone who supports the channel on Patreon if you’re feeling generous and you’d like to throw money at me there then there’s a link in the description below the video i’ll see some of you in the comments and I’ll see the rest of you next time goodbye