🚲 A quick and easy way to cycle from Dulwich to Deptford

You can cycle from Dulwich in south London to Deptford in south east London, entirely on quiet streets and protected cycle lanes.

The route is 8.5km long (5.3 miles) and makes use of quiet streets and paths in Dulwich Park, Peckham Rye, and part of Cycleway 10.

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, 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/1424536395?ref=wtd&share_token=a3vu5gEUFAUhcoKkZe7onByA72hCnvtd5Sio9UpDagspVvSQvn

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/mymaps/viewer?mid=1XlpvN9R-Wg7qZHyezO8y-eVlftr4e0WX&hl=en

Hello and welcome back to London cycle routes today I’ll be showing you how to cycle from dich in South London to depford in southeast London this ride takes about half an hour and you can do the whole thing on quiet streets and protected cycle Lanes by public transport the same

Journey takes around an hour and requires a change of bus or train so you can save a huge amount of time by cycling 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 big 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 so we’re starting on College Road opposite the dich picture gallery and we’re going to head into dich Park the first stretch of the route in the park is on a little road which does have some parking so watch out for cars pulling out of the spaces on the edge of

The street once we get out of this section though and past this gate the road very quickly turns into a traffic free path these PS are shared with pedestrians so make sure you give everybody plenty of space and ride with c cour y they are however nice and wide

So you shouldn’t run into any problems one thing to be aware of is that the parked gates are locked at night so if you’re coming here after dark you’ll need to take an alternative route for this first section fortunately that’s not too difficult you can just continue Down College Road and turn

Right into Court Lane which is very low traffic as it’s closed to cars at one end once you go down Court Lane you should be able to join the route at the gate where we exit the park just up ahead here personally I prefer riding through the park where possible as it is

Just a really nice spot we’re going to head straight out of the park gate onto Anella road but just make sure that you’re careful as you Cross Court Lane and check in both directions for traffic inella Road itself is really quiet as it benefits from the same point closure as

Court Lane does meaning that there isn’t any through traffic on here on right coming up the relatively ornate Victorian building is dll Library if you fancy stopping to pick up a book this next Junction is important to pay attention as the right turn can be a

Little bit tricky we want to turn right into ethero street but note that there is a bit of a blind corner here so do check that there’s no traffic and then you can turn into here by the way that space on the left there protected by plastic wands is actually an extension

Of the p pavement don’t mistake it for a cycle Lane hopefully Souther Council will be along in a few months time and replace that with a permanent pavement buildout with proper curbs and such it’s nice to see improved space outside the front of a primary school there although

It does make EO Street a little bit tight when it comes to squeezing past cars so just keep that in mind as you cycle down there we’re now on frean road which is a really useful cycle Link in this part of town it’s quite long and

Straight but it’s also closed at one end with some bards so there isn’t any through motor traffic on here and you can usually rely on it being relatively quiet while it is a comfortable ride one thing that you should be aware of is the side roads like the one coming up here

These are not closed to through traffic and you’ll often see cars rat running down them at relatively fast speeds and sometimes ignoring the giveway lines so just be cautious as you approach those Junctions and make sure you’re paying attention souk should probably think about fixing that issue by turning the

Whole area into a low traffic neighborhood rather than just having the single closure which we’re passing through now this end of the street is also badly in need of a resurface it looks like it’s been dug up quite a lot and it has some pretty big potholes be left here onto the shared

Pavement and you get a signalized Crossing which helps you cross PE andry wests side right onto peek andry common just like with dll Park these paths are shared with pedestrians and they’re also quite a bit narrower than the ones in the previous Park we were in so just

Make sure that you’re careful ride courteously and don’t give anyone a scare by going too quick past them peek and my Comon is better than doll Park in one respect and that’s that it’s not closed at night so you can ride here at all hours including if you are commuting

From work in the winter where it might be dark by the time you leave your workplace there are also street lights as you can see so it shouldn’t be too daunting to ride through here and it does remain relatively well lit at all hours pekam Ry has always been common

Land but it was preserved as such in 1868 after believe it or not a traveling wild beast show arrived here and set up Camp local people were apparently concerned that the land might become privately owned or misused so the local government purchased it for £1,000 it was eventually transferred to the

Metropolitan Board of Works which was the London wide local government at the time the Metropolitan board also built dollet Park which we passed through earlier after Crossing out of peek andry onto summon road we find ourselves in a kind of maze of streets with very little traffic on them thanks to an elaborate

One-way system and various Point closures like the one you can see on the right there there if you need help remembering which way to go at any point in this video you can always download the map of the route there’s a link to it in the description below the video on

YouTube and it comes in a GPX format file which you can use on whatever app or device that you prefer it’s very much a standard format the next couple of minutes are probably the weakest part of this route I think when I cycled down lynen Grove

For this video as you can see it was relatively quiet I think it is like this a lot of the time but it does get a bit busier and there are some features of this road that give you a clue to that if you look at the street here you’ll

See a chicane these are installed to try and slow traffic and there’s also a speed camera here in yellow on our right in the middle of the road there’s also other things like raised tables speed bumps and another chicane just coming up these these are all clues that people

Who live on this street are fed up with traffic problems and have written to the council to ask them to do something about them unfortunately they’re also not particularly effective measures so my hunch is that if you came down here at Peak time you’d probably face quite a

Bit more traffic I don’t want to put anybody off from cycling down there I do think it is the best way through this area but equally I don’t want to lie to you and pretend that it’s always going to be that quiet I do think whenever you

See measures like that with chicanes or speed bumps on a side road that’s supposed to be a residential street you should be thinking uh this area probably needs a low traffic neighborhood as Point closures filters those tend to be the interventions that actually work in terms of getting rid of through traffic

And cutting through traffic in residential areas so I really hope souc does take a little bit of a look at that for this area around non head station it would make a lot of sense now now if this isn’t an area that you know well yourself I should point out that it is

Pretty hilly around here there are some kind of unwelcome gradients unless you’re the kind of person who welcomes Hills I do know that you guys do exist probably the biggest hill on this route is the street that we’re about to turn onto now and that is Walla Road fortunately in this direction we’re

Actually going to be cycling down the hill but as you can see it does drop away relatively quickly down there there now while a road actually has a modal filter on it it’s closed in the middle so it’s actually a really comfortable ride and there isn’t any through traffic

On it it’s nice and wide as well so you do have plenty of space those low traffic levels also mean that the hill in the opposite direction when you’re going up it isn’t actually so much of a big deal I think this is a point I’ve

Made before and I’ll make it again I think that the problem with hills when you’re on a bike is actually the fear of having a car up behind you rather than the hill itself necessarily being difficult when you can rely on being in a low traffic situation like you’re in

An ltn or on a filtered Street or you’ve got your own protected Lane those Hills are a lot less taxing and certainly in my view I just don’t mind them as much by the way I slow right down here so you can get a look at the building on the

Left what do you think that is it’s uh quite an interesting Victorian piece of public architect ET it’s actually a fire station which I find pretty incredible that’s probably not the first thing that jumped into your mind if you look here on the left you can actually see the big

Engine bay facing onto Queen’s road now we used the tuen crossing to pass into the lanest away estate and you have to be very careful here do not cycle down these steps um if it’s dark you may miss that there are steps there you have to go around and use the ramp annoyingly

Bears a chicane on the ramp which makes things really unpleasant and given that chicane is there to help people who can’t use the stairs uh particularly people who might say have buggies be cycling or in a wheelchair it does seem pretty bad to have a chicane there given

It actually makes the access a lot harder the route has become a lot more comfortable and low traffic again on streets without through traffic although that section through lyen Grove and past nun head station has a little bit more traffic on it than you would like like I

Do think it is still worth going that way and that’s partly because of the huge time saving that this route gives over the other options if you remember from the beginning of the video it’s really difficult to get from dich to depford by public transport it takes

Around an hour and requires a change this route is pretty comfortable I think most people could cycle it pretty easily even if you’re a beginner and yet it only takes half an hour as I alluded to earlier I think that that section around Lyndon dri and nun head station would

Really benefit from a low traffic neighborhood it would really plug a gap in the cycle Network around here and give people more options given the public transport along that axis is clearly not as good as it could be hopefully suuk and lewisham councils will take a look at that by the way one

Thing lewisham might be doing soon which could improve this route is putting a filter on cold blow Lane and hopefully adding two-way cycling on there if that happens we wouldn’t need to go this way via a Le Road you could just continue straight down Monson road which we were

On earlier and it would cut about a minute off the journey until that does happen we need to go through this path on to John Williams close which has this really unfortunate chicane on it and that will lead us onto Bridge house medows which is a path which will

Connect us to cycleway 10 an official tfl route which is going to take us directly into the heart of depford now this street may be called John Williams close but it’s not named after the famous composer of the Star Wars theme tune John Williams it’s actually named after John Williams who

Was an environmental health officer at lewisham Council who was actually killed by a drunk driver while on patrol that’s a really sad story and also seems like a nice memorial now we’re currently cycling through Bridge house Meadows and I’ll be honest this is an incredibly fun path to

Cycle down it has a really Pleasant undulation to it and it’s reasonably wide so even though it’s shared with pedestrians it’s a relatively comfortable one we want to cross the road here to get to the Shar path on the other side of s Canal Road and the way

We do that is by going into senagal way here and turning right up The Path you’re not actually allowed to cycle on the crossing itself there as it’s not a toucon Crossing however that will change soon as Souther Council has plans to install a proper cycle crossing over Sur

Canal Road as part of the Peckham to Ry Cycle Way program which will hopefully be going in over the next year or so that will be really welcome as currently the crossing Arrangement is not great to be honest as shared paths go this one is pretty good it tends have pretty little

In the way of people walking it’s nice and wide it has a relatively good surface and it’s nicely separated from the roadway by this nice bit of planting and a grass Verge one thing you do need to watch out for though is the entrances and exits to the businesses along the

Road like this one here there could be Vans lorries cars Etc pulling out of any of those at any one time so just make sure that you are careful we then find our our elves in folkstone gardens which is a Park which is open 24 hours there’s no gate to lock

Or anything like that and it does also have Street lighting so it shouldn’t be pitch black if you’re cycling through here on your way home from work or anything like that we come here a lot on this channel and I just like to point out the nice new playground that seems

To be emerging on the right hand side there it may even be open by the time this video goes out at the end of January cuz it looks pretty complete I might even bring my son there if I take him on the back of my bike now don’t

Miss this right turn down Childers Street this road is a relatively quiet one and I never really see much in the way of through traffic on here although for some reason when I came down here this time there was a very frustrated Royal Mail van overtaking that red car

And absolutely powering it down the road so hopefully you won’t see anything like that when you come down here for the rest of the route We are following the official route of Cycle Way 10 which used to be known as quiet way 1 so you

Can do that by looking where it says C10 written on the ground and there’s also these green and blue signs on lamp posts pointing you in the correct direction it’s pretty good way finding and I don’t think you should get lost especially if you’ve seen this video coming up ahead

There is a ghost Pub you can see on the left there it’s called the Lord Clyde used to be a pub and is obviously identifiable as such but I think it’s Flats now obviously it’s great that the people who live there have somewhere to

Live but it’s always a bit sad to see a pub close I think now we’re on Edward Street which is a protected cycle Lane and this street here actually has the honor of being the most recently constructed curb protected cycle Lane that lewisham Council has built and it’s

Not a very recent uh constructed cycle Lane it actually went in in 201 16 so it’s been 8 years almost since lean built any proper curb protected cycle Lanes they have put in some wand protected Lanes a very limited section just south of leam town center and there

Was also a tfl scheme on cyle Wave 4 but if you count those there are more recent ones but that’s the most recent curb protected Lane the council has built um and it takes us quite nicely to the middle of depford High Street so we’ve

Done it dich to depford in just half an hour when it takes around an hour and requires a change to get hit by public transport do let me know in the comments what you think of that route um you can see there’s a bit of a kink at the end

It gets slightly indirect and you kind of dog leg back on yourself from the map um if the cold blow Lane cycle route goes in if Lam does that that should cut off most of that Kink and save you a minute or two which will be I think

Quite nice it’s already a pretty decent route but as I said I’d love to see some low traffic neighborhoods around nunhead station and around lyen Grove I think those areas could really do with some improvement and they’re clearly popular cycle routes as well make sure you hit subscribe if you haven’t already and

Thanks very much again to those of you who contribute on the patreon if anyone else is feeling generous and would like to chart the channel a couple of quid a month then you can find a link in the description below the video I’ll see you guys all again next time