🚲 The best way to cycle from Oxford Street to Oval without traffic

You can cycle from Oxford Street in central London to Oval in south London entirely on quiet streets and protected cycle lanes.

The route is 6.6km long (4.1 miles) and makes use of the Park Lane cycleway, Cycleway 3, and Cycleway 5.

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.

And if you like what the channel is doing and want to support it, you can also contribute to the London Cycle Routes Patreon below. It really helps keep the channel going:

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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/2323095972?share_token=aNmgGUviSVEvypUV3ZXUAHwiQN1hbKzSJfy4me4DDV1WLfJzxl&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=51.50521349609208%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=12

hello and welcome back to London Cycle Routts today I’ll be showing you how to cycle from Oxford Street in central London to Oval in South London this ride takes about 25 minutes and you can do the whole thing on quiet streets and protected cycle lanes by public transport the same journey takes around half an hour so cycling is a smart way to make this trip 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 too then you can find a link in the description below the video all right let’s get going so we’re starting at the western end of Oxford Street and we’re going to turn around and use this Tucan crossing to get onto the Marble Arch traffic island this is unfortunately a barren and wasted space right in the heart of central London but could be so much nicer but for our purposes today it’s our way of getting to the Park Lane cycle way which will take us south there are a couple more touan crossings which you’re allowed to cycle over you can tell from the bike lights to get to the cycle way that is a pretty nifty way out of Oxford Street and I think a lot of people don’t know about it because they don’t spot that the crossings there are for bikes as well but now you know it’s certainly a lot nicer than braving the horrible gyatory at Marble Arch in my view the cycle way is mostly a separate lane but there’s a short section of shared space right here to bypass this old ramp on the left make sure you cycle sensibly on here and don’t scare anybody on foot back on the main cycle way there are also at points bus stop islands between the cycle lane and the road like the one just here so watch out for pedestrians crossing from the buses onto the pavement and make sure that you give way when appropriate this cycle lane was installed in 2020 during the COVID pandemic with temporary materials and those temporary materials are gradually being replaced with permanent ones as we see here the cycle way is closed and there’s an all right diversion in place which has been temporarily marked as shared space with those blue signs so again do watch out for people walking normally you just continue right down the cycle lane until you get to the south carriage drive at Hyde Park which is obviously better than this but it’s great to see that they’ve managed to keep some sort of route open during construction one thing that could be seriously improved here is the way the lane directs you through this rather narrow gate in both directions and also in a second when we cycle through the archway where pedestrians and cyclists would both be much better off directed through separate arches to prevent the shared space mess that you see here i’ve said this before but really this whole crossing and junction needs a redesign with separate crossings for people walking and cycling as a shared touan crossing really just doesn’t cut it here given the volume of people on foot and on bikes it’s really not great for everyone while they’re at it they could designate one of the three ways past this archway as a cycle path and keep the other two for pedestrians instead of having everyone mixed in together which really just isn’t ideal for anyone this crossing was green by the way but for some reason several cars decided to stop on it so it was mostly blocked i feel like I’m seeing that kind of driving more and more actually and I guess it’s not surprising as it’s never enforced so people just do it on Constitution Hill here it’s pedestrians on the left side of that grass verge and people cycling on the right side here the signage and markings explaining this are poor though so tourists often get confused and walk up the wrong one then once they’ve made the wrong choice it’s very difficult for them to get to the other side because of the fencing i suspect the reason that it’s poor is because the royal parks or the crown estate or whoever controls the path is precious about preserving its historic character though they don’t seem to mind the ugly metal events fencing on the left here which was here when I filmed this in the short term just try and be nice to the lost tourists and try and remember what it’s like to be lost yourself in an unfamiliar place this area in front of Buckingham Palace plus the nearby mall is pedestrianized on weekends by the way i tend to stick to the cycle lanes anyway but just something to be aware of as there can be people wandering into the lanes bird Cage Walk which we’re running along now is a great ride and has a two-way protected cycle lane along it it’s called Bur Cage Walk because King James I had a royal aviary here which he used to house royal hunting birds like falcons and hawks one theme that really emerges as you pass through the center of Westminster particularly Parliament Square and Westminster Bridge just up ahead is that there really isn’t enough space given over to pedestrians this is one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations and people are basically hemmed into some really quite narrow pavements and often spilling out onto crossings look at this crossing at Great George Street which is hugely over capacity and is heaving with people trying to fit across there’s a similar situation just up the street in a second at the edge of Parliament Square which you can see in a moment and really at every crossing point around here then once we get past this crossing contrast it with the literally four lanes of general traffic which have been carved out of this side of Parliament Square alone this is supposed to be a world heritage site but it’s an ocean of asphalt with people crammed onto very inadequate pavements i don’t think any other European country would treat a world heritage site like this in 2025 and it would be a lot better off in my view if large parts of it were pedestrianized the problem is most acute here on Westminster Bridge where at all hours of the day people are spilling into the cycle lane it’s easy to blame these people for standing in the road when they shouldn’t but frankly these pavements could easily be doubled in width if you made the bridge buses only which would remove the need for a separate bus lane some people prefer to use the bus lane to cycle along here because the situation can get so bad but if you do go for the bus lane then you have to deal with that illegally parked ice cream van which is here every day and blocks the bus lane at all hours and just pays the traffic fines as a cost of doing business i’m not sure what it says that you can openly get away with that everyday meters from the Houses of Parliament but I’m not sure it’s good i’m turning right here and note that I did that by taking the rightand turning lane which gets a different traffic light from the leftand lane so that you’re not conflicting with traffic turning across you there’s a short section on protected lanes here and then we turn into Royal Street which is nice and quiet if slightly narrowed by parking on both sides apologies for the shaky camera work as we pass under the railway by the way the surface is pretty poor and the image stabilization on the camera doesn’t really work in the dark there’s a cool new feature coming up in a moment as we turn into Hercules Road i’ve long admired the planting around this nifty bolard here keeping the street quiet but Lambeath Council recently installed even more planting on the lefthand side here this is a great use of the space here and I think it really transforms the environment of the street and just makes it a much nicer place to be there are more positive changes to the area coming as well in the coming months this section of cycle wave 5 which we’re now following will benefit from the Walnut Tree and Voxil Pleasure Gardens lowra neighborhoods which will be trial around this area starting I believe in September or October you can see the proposed designs on Lambbeath’s consultation website i’ve had no problems recommending Cycleway 5 in the past as this section of it is often very quiet but actually today as you can see it’s a good example of how sometimes it’s not so comfortable so I think this route will genuinely really benefit from the removal of through traffic and just make this a much better place to ride a bike one reason I think the traffic might be a bit worse on here today is due to the works taking place on nearby Lambbeath Bridge which is causing some cars to turn into the back streets to try and find a shortcut those works are due to finish in December 2025 and the new protected lanes on Lamouth Bridge will complement the new LTNs around here really nicely and create some slightly more direct quiet routes into Westminster particularly around Parliament Square i’ll definitely be documenting those on the channel and making videos showing people how to use them so if you want to keep up to date with that then do make sure that you hit subscribe on the channel now so that you’re alerted to new videos as I post them one particularly cool change that’s coming as part of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens LTN is going to be just around the corner on Vauxhall Street here the area in front of this school is going to be turned into a permanent 24/7 pedestrians and cycles only zone which should create a nice new public space and be great for the kids at the school as well incredibly Lambbeath Council has plans for at least five new lowt traffic neighborhoods in the north of the Boa before the end of a year and three of them improve cycle way 5 the route that we were following for the last few minutes a random point of interest here by the way the new development on the left has really started to take shape since the last time I did a video down this street before it was behind a load of construction hoardings we’re now arriving at Kennington Oval and the street here recently got a reworking as part of a Kennington Oval re-imagined project uh this removed through traffic from the area and also added a bunch of new planting and seating um and especially created a pedestrian space outside the school um it was done on quite a low budget and you can sort of tell but I think it is actually a massive improvement to what was here before and it creates a really nice environment for walking cycling and also just hanging out and it also brings us really nicely to the entrance to Kennington Oval which you can just see here in front of us on Harleford Road with that quite famous frontage to the cricket ground so we are here i think the highlight of this video for me was actually showing that way to get out of Oxford Street at the beginning to the Park Lane cycle way which isn’t something that I’ve used in a video before but which I think could be a really helpful link for a lot of people it’s also uh fun to look forward to the improvements coming to the Vauxhall and North Lambeath area in the coming months i’ll definitely revisit cycle wave 5 for sure after they go in and compare the difference i suspect it might be quite significant uh for now thank you to everyone who supports the channel on Patreon uh I really appreciate it there’s a link in the description where you can throw money at me for anyone else considering doing that um and you can also hit the subscribe button on the channel so that you find and see the new videos on here as I post them please do leave a like on the video on YouTube as it helps other people find it kind of boosts it in the algorithm and I’ll also see some of you in the comments too uh I’d be particularly interested to hear what people think about my little rant about pedestrianizing the area around the Houses of Parliament and Westminster which bits and roads do you think would work best pedestrian only if any do you think it’s a silly idea let me know below and I will see the rest of you next time goodbye