You can cycle from Woodford in north east London to Stratford in east London, entirely on quiet streets and protected cycle lanes.
The route is 9.7km long (6 miles) and makes use of protected cycle lanes on Woodford New Road and Great Eastern Road, as well as quiet streets in various LTNs in Waltham Forest and Newham.
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:
http://patreon.com/londoncycleroutes
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/1899654057?share_token=a55bULHKGEQDpEeDmGERrkEebY8z0SlkX08t7mng5Sngjusav7&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/mymaps/viewer?mid=1XlpvN9R-Wg7qZHyezO8y-eVlftr4e0WX&hl=en
17 Comments
Avoiding the Central Line is a win in my opinion.
At Green Man interchange take the right turn after you took to pop onto the correct side of the High Road Leytonstone avoiding 2 pelican crossings to cross back to O'Neils O'Pub
Great video as always! Just to say I really appreciate when you say what railway line you cross, as it does help me get a better feel for where you are, and it is cool to see the places trains go through that you don't usually see
invaluable channel articulating the hands-down best way to get around London.
Never give up comrade!
Newham is a terrible borough for cycling, lots of long one-way streets narrowed by double sided parking, big 30mph roads with speeding the norm, every cycleway has years of phased consultation, the only good east-west route (The Greenway) has a dangerous diversion over a narrow bridge for the next 18 months and the council seem fine with that. Don't get me started on the un-signalled dual-carriageway pedestrian crossings in Becton or the deathwish you need to cycle to the ferry from the east of the borough.
I think the upside of the parking on these narrow roads is that it forces cars to drive slowly and carefully – so if they were to remove some of the parking I think they should replace it with things that keep the road that narrow.
the Snaresbrook road junction you mentioned has never been fully delivered, and is quite dangerous to cross. I've had drivers beep as they turned across my path due to the confusion. I asked waltham forest about it in an FOI and they sent a feasibility study looking at installing proper lights of some sort/closing the side road the cycle lane crosses. Nothing committed/built yet. Great video as always!
11:56 not only 'should councils remove parking when having too much on a street obstructs the flow of traffic' but the goal should be to emulate cities like paris or amsterdam and have a plan for how much parking spaces we are going to stop subsidising/get rid of each term – a widened sidewalk with greenery for example is so much better than to keep privatising public space like we did in the 20th c
11:41 double parking has made this very narrow. I imagine the refuse lorry struggles to get down here, as would a fire engine
It’s a shame about the Neighbouring borough of Tower Hamlets 🙁
You should also check out the new cycle lanes in Silvertown way and North Woolwich Road in newham. Currently installing segregated cycle lanes from Canning Town station to Connaught Bridge, near City Airport.
Big Ben to Richmond Park.
I lived near Whipps Cross from the mid-nineteen-forties to the sixties and I knew some of these roads very well. It's interesting to see the changes, thank you.
This is a really handy route – I tried it out this afternoon! A couple of suggested simplifications: 1/ At the Green Man Interchange why not go straight onto Bushwood (via the Bush Rd cycle path segment) . This saves you a number of traffic lights and turns and congested rds . Bushwood is usually quiet and 2/ You could consider staying on Manbey Grove near Stratford instead of turning left into Manbey Rd. It becomes Grove Crescent Rd and leads into the cycle path on Great Eastern. It was very quiet this afternoon and saves some traffic lights and turns. Not sure if it is always as quiet.
This is a really handy route – I tried it out this afternoon! A couple of suggested simplifications: 1/ At the Green Man Interchange why not go straight onto Bush Rd. This saves you a number of traffic lights and turns and congested rds . Bush Rd is usually quiet and 2/ You could consider staying on Manbey Grove near Stratford instead of turning left into Manbey Rd. It becomes Grove Crescent Rd and leads into the cycle path on Great Eastern. It was very quiet this afternoon and saves some traffic lights and turns. Not sure if it is always as quiet.
Would love if you could do this for Romford to Stratford!
@11:46 / 18:01…the discussion on 'double-sided parking and narrow RoW as a result'. As an effectively North American cyclist (even with British roots and family there) something that occurs to me as how Brits are allowed to park facing in both directions. One of the alarms that gets tingled for me watching these vids is the extra alertness and needed 'mental modelling' for drivers pulling out of a parking space in either direction, not just one, as in North Am, one can only park in the direction that their adjacent lane travels in. For a one-way road, obviously both sides of parking, if allowed, would be facing the same direction.
So here's the point: If Brits were allowed only to park as North Ams (and perhaps other regions) are allowed, the same amount of parking spaces would remain existing, but effectively the safety of cyclists and other drivers would be increased by virtue of the 'possible scenarios' of events being reduced. In other words, if you're in the left lane of a two lane bidirectional street w/ parking both sides (as in the UK), a vehicle merging into your lane from parking has to be moving in the same direction. Ostensibly, as well as being more predictable (Hmmmm: 'Less unpredictable', shid happens constantly), the chances of that vehicle coming straight at you are greatly reduced.
Comments on this please, I might be missing something. Even though the overall cycling risks wouldn't be greatly reduced, they would be at least somewhat. The inconvenience for some drivers? They have to go around the block to park in the 'right direction'. A very small cost to pay.
I've just Googled on the topic, it's well discussed, and as much as YouTube will strip large quotes or links, here's a quip from one site that summates the situation very well: (as per 'Why do North Ams park in the direction of the adjacent lane)
[They want something closer to uniformity because uniformity processes traffic better. This is why you see some aisles that seem really narrow: they’re seriously trying to force you to do it one way. Reason: traffic flows better when there’s less chaos.]
I'll research this further later, and post more.