🚲 A surprisingly great way to cycle from Chingford to Walthamstow

You can cycle from Chingford in north east London to Walthamstow, entirely on quiet streets and protected cycle lanes.

The route is 7.8km long (4.8 miles) and makes use of quiet streets and crossings around Chingford, Waltham Forest’s cycle tracks on Forest Road and Billet Road, as well as the new Lloyd Park LTN.

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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/1397503584?ref=wtd&share_token=aHXZXJKlCBdd9vMNK0emnPoi5GomxXtfGKTTQE6zsQeJSFb80v

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 chingford in North London to walam Stow 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 you can even save a bit of time by getting on your bike 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 around the

Corner from tringford railway station and we’re going to head down barisford Road Road most of the route that we’re taking today is actually an official London cycle Network route taking back to the 1980s and 1990s the thing is you probably don’t know that it’s there because there

Aren’t any signs on the road marking where to go it’s only shown on some quite nerdy Maps fortunately I’ve been reading those maps for you and I’ve tried the route out and you know what it’s actually pretty good most of the route is on relatively quiet resid itial

Back streets but there are actually some bits of surprisingly impressive cycling infrastructure linking up the more difficult parts and I’ll Point those out as we go what more the local Council has actually been quietly improving this route over the last few years with some upgrades that you may not have noticed

If it’s been a while since you last cycled up here these have really improved the route and helped deal with some of the trickier Crossings and Junctions the first one is actually up ahead you need to look out on your left for the cycle symbols and then bear

Carefully left onto the shared pavement here which is indicated by the blue sign there’s a parallel crossing here which is like a zebra Crossing that you’re allowed to cycle over and that really helps you avoid cycling on that quite busy road that we had to go across there

Do be careful as you approach The Crossing though as not all drivers know what parallel Crossing is and not all of them going to stop for you so do make sure that they’re coming to a halt before you put yourself In Harm’s Way and go across the road we are actually

In the London burrow of walam forest at the moment which this entire route is contained in and walam Forest has a deservedly good reputation for investing in cycle infrastructure the thing is it does almost all of its investment in its Southern half around wam stow and

Leighton and tends to do a lot less to the north of the north circular Road which is where we are now this route is the one exception and the B has been quietly improving this ancient London cycle Network route in order to get it up to scratch it isn’t just Road

Crossings that they’ve been installing there are also some new cycle tracks and also modal filters to keep through traffic out one such example is just here on Friday Hill East this road has had through traffic removed from it for decades but the bards at the end here

Are actually new they replaced an older set of bards that you couldn’t cycle through and that permeability has made it a lot easier to cycle this shared pavement here which basically acts as a two-way cycle track is also new and really simplifies the approach to this roundabout which has two brand new

Excellent parallel Crossings on it and its own cycle track which allows you to bypass it there’s then another parallel Crossing which really neatly puts you into this filtered Street on water Hall Avenue before all that was put in in 2016 or 17 you would have been expected

To cycle on the carriageway and brave that roundabout with the traffic now it’s safe fast and inviting to just bypass the whole thing I just really like the way that it’s been done now if you look on the ground coming up you’ll see a couple of cycle symbols painted on

The road in each direction that is unfortunately about as extensive as the wayf finding gets on this route wayf finding is the big weak point of this route and it would be great to have some proper signage directing people in the right way as it can be quite twisty and

Turny to find the right way to go obviously as a viewer of this channel you can download a map of the root in the description below the video and you can load it for free and whatever app or device you choose to use and that will

Help you find your way but some signage would be nice and I reckon tfl should probably adopt this as a cycle way given some of the infrastructure is really high quality the worst turning is probably here where you have to travel on the Avenue for a couple of seconds before

Going into Nightingale avenue the avenue is quite a busy road and it’s probably not great that you have to cross it uned there it’ be nice to have some sort of additional Crossing to help you get over there as an aside one thing I found interesting on this route was all the

Pavement parking like on this street we just went through that pavement parking seems to be officially sanctioned by the council with painted Bays on the pavement and it’s interesting to see it because it doesn’t really tally with walp and forest’s image as a cycle and walking friendly borer when you get

North of the north circular things start to look very out of London no matter which borrow you’re in another thing worth mentioning about this route is that there is definitely a slight incline to it by which I mean there are Hills I’m pretty sure that we’ve got the

Best of it going in this direction from chingford to walam Stow with the slope generally going downhill but there are some uphill bits as well on this route neither Hills are particularly massive but if you’re doing the route in the opposite direction you might be pedaling

A little bit harder I think on some of the stretches than you might otherwise be doing if you were cycling in a flatter B like Hackney this latter section of handforth Avenue is a good example you can see that we’ve got quite a nice downhill stretch here which is

Great fun to Coast down but probably not so fun to cycle up this section here is also narrowed by quite a lot of parking on both sides of the road which seems unnecessary to me to be honest and this car coming up here illustrates that it

Can be a bit unpleasant if you look de ahead there you’ll see the Regal Cinema which is an old art deco building that’s currently in the process of being renovated I think they’re going to turn it into a cinema again and possibly also add some Flats on the top as well it’s

Certainly a handsome building now there is a turnoff hidden on the right in a second which you don’t want to miss it’s a right angle and it’s actually the first time we’ll be leaving the road we’ll be going along a path which runs along the river Ching you may think that

The river Ching is what gives chingford its name but apparently that’s not true chingford was chingford well before this River had a name and no one’s really sure exactly where the word chingford originates from although there are a few theories hopefully when you come this

Way there won’t be a BMW parked on the double yellow lines at the exit to that Crossing by the way so far I think the streets that we’ve been on have been actually pretty good in terms of the levels of traffic on them now I should

Point out that I’m cycling this in the middle of the day on a weekday I’m pretty sure that the streets this goes on are generally low traffic most of the time but it’s possible that some of them are a little bit busier around Peak time if there are plenty of people driving

Around so your mileage may vary if you know the area particularly well and you cycle this route often please do let me know in the comments what you think of the traffic levels does it get busier If so on what roads it would be great to know traffic levels do have a tendency

To vary I love this cargo bike that someone’s riding in front of us by the way it looks really really cool it looks like it’s got an electric assist motor on there and it’s also got a child seat strap to it which really looks kind of practical for cting stuff around

Including kids here’s the river chering on our right again by the way and do just make note that the path along here is quite slippy when wet because of all the leaf mulch so just yeah take it carefully more positively there are street lights along the whole length of

The path so you should be able to cycle through here at night although of course different people have different views and feelings about where they feel safe so obviously take that into account that that path is away from the road and may feel slightly isolated after dark

There’s a little blue sign there on the right pointing Us in the correct Direction a few more like those along the Route would make a world of difference I think to not missing all those twists and turns more pavement parking on the left here by the way in

Quite a big way which is as I said before a little bit surprising to see we’re coming up to the Crooked Billet roundabout which is quite a big old roundabout but don’t worry we don’t have to cycle on the main road here there’s actually a really quite good cycle in

Underpass running through the whole thing and it also has some pretty excellent wayf finding in it cuz that’s usually one of the weak points of these things they can be quite hard to find where to go we want to follow the blue signs pointing us towards Billet road so

There’s one just Dead Ahead there Billet Road and there should be another just waving us up the hill here and then onto the left you can see it just there we’ll then go on to Billet Road itself and we’ll be using the protected cycle Lanes along here I say protected cycle Lanes

It’s kind of halfway between a protected cycle Lane and a shared pavement I think it’s fair to say that these lanes are probably not wal and forest’s best work they give up at the side roads here they’re kind of indistinguishable from the pavment in part but they do get the

Job done and they get us to where we need to go safely without having to interact with cars it’s easy to criticize infrastructure like this especially where the space could have been taken from parking instead of the pavement but frankly if it wasn’t here then I wouldn’t be showing you this

Route because there’ll be a gap in the route so it’s definitely better that it exists than it doesn’t now we’re actually entering the newest bit of infrastructure that’s been installed along this route this is the edge of the newest low trffic neighborhood installed by wal and Forest bough Council and

That’s the Lloyd Park and hium Hill ltn that consists of a series of road closures to motor traffic around this area and it’s really reduced traffic along a lot of this route including penin Avenue you can see one of those closures in the distance just ahead of

Us there and they’ll actually be another one much more easily visible outside the shops just at the end of this street too which we’re going to cycle through onto car Avenue these filters leave themselves open to cycling so it’s permeable to us but it stops through traffic using these streets as a cut

Through and the result is that car road which we’re on and also winds Avenue which we’ll be using in a second are both really dead quiet with very little traffic on them at all just people accessing their homes and that makes them a really nice north south cycle way

Through this area connecting Billet road which we are on to Forest Road which is where we’ll be heading Forest Road being a real major thorough Fair through the center of walam Stow a nice East West Route with protected cycle tracks on it it’s a good example of how low traffic

Neighborhoods can help build a cycle Network by opening up these streets to be low traffic corridors connecting between segregated infrastructure which are the primary cycle routes with these secondary routes that you’ve got here you can see here we’re just going to turn on to Forest Road and the protected

Cycle Lanes along here are of much higher quality than the ones along Billet Road they’re not hugely wide to be honest but they are just much nicer to ride along much more continuous and much more separate from the pavement as well we’re nearly there so I’m just

Going to say that if you haven’t yet subscribed to the channel make sure you hit subscribe to see future videos and if you really like the work that we’re doing on the channel you can always Chuck us a couple of quid on the patreon and there’s a link to that in the

Description below thanks so much to those of you who do that already it’s massively appreciated so thanks very much for watching guys really hope you enjoy that let me know in the comments what you think of that route you can see from the map there that it’s surprisingly direct

I think it would really benefit from much better way finding in that first bit and if tfl wanted to sign it I think it would be good because wal and Forest have done quite a lot of work improving The Crossings along there that last low traffic neighborhood that we passed

Through was really excellent and the Crooked Billet roundabout and also the earlier roundabout we passed through those are two really good examples of how you can deal with cycling around roundabouts and have them be really hospitable I think uh they were completely fine to pass through and we were completely separate from traffic

Both times let me know below what you think of the highlights and low lights of that video and also what you think of the pavement parking in W and Forest is it Justified or should they move away from it I will see you guys again next time