You can cycle from Highbury and Islington in north London to the Cambridge Heath in east London entirely on quiet streets and protected cycle lanes.
The route is 4.2km long (2.6 miles) and makes use of a new crossing over Essex Road, a new bus gate on Whiston Road in Hackney, as well as existing LTNs.
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:
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/2524595275?share_token=arZFMMKQzHDJ87K8OIXtiNdFU5Ma6kwmNCk0h40STWbUzxo3P4&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=0%2C0&z=11
27 Comments
Your opening hello always reminds me of Leslie Phillips. 😊
👍🇳🇿
Would the map of London Cycle Routes have a better presentation if Places were unchecked altogther or just unchecked for 2021 to 2024?
i'm usually not especially sympathetic towards drivers breaking restrictions due to not seeing them, but force of habit built up over potentially decades can be quite strong compared to the relatively small signs in the context of how much there is to pay attention to on the streets of london. in a perfect world, these people probably shouldnt be driving to begin with, but as things are now i think in most cases you could earn some goodwill by sending one warning letter for the first offense (rather than an immediate fine) in a short window after introducing new measures, especially ones that aren't obvious via changes to the streetscape that might wake people out of their routine rather than being entirely virtual through use of a camera like the bus gate highlighted — in my experience most car drivers i encounter living in hackney are chill or at the very least have resigned to their fate of bicycles being everywhere, and most things i see them doing wrong seem to be out of innocent (well, as innocent as you can be while in control of a two ton metal box) ignorance rather than intentional aggro
at the very least, it would help quell a bunch of the common culture war bait that usually gets trotted out ("it's just a money making exercise", etc)
I don't live in London, but I'm really impressed with the infrastructure you show. I hope my broke local council can get some funding for more routes in the future. The political will is there, but the money is not!
I'm interested in seeing the bike hangers too, we don't have them in my bit of the Midlands, are they common, or variable by London council?
Keep up the good work chap, it gives me hope that cycling will be more normalised in the UK.
i also noticed that the surface on the road leading to the essex road crossing was improved. Excellent to see, after being super annoyed at the road works. ..still isn't a great surface.
It is nice to see the new bus gate at Whiston Road. I hope that it also quietens down the traffic along Queensbridge. That intersection (Whiston/Queensbridge) has been a weak link for students biking to Haggerston school nearby.
These modal filters and the quiet streets resulting from them do really look amazing.
I just find a bit disappointing that these impressive traffic calming measures are still too rarely taken as an occasion to rethink the urban design. The streets you cycle through are mostly very wide with very little greenery and parking space on both sides all the time – I hope that their transformation will be the next step.
Haringey council need to learn a thing or two from Islington and Hackney!
Green Lanes is absolute nightmare to cycle through and there is no clear alternative to it.
Any recommendations on a route between Wood Green and Finsbury Park that doesn’t go through the Lanes ?
Excellent! 👍🙂
Thanks for your videos. I live in Canada and, although I am an older guy, I still cycle quite a bit in my quiet city. I often visit London, but walk (and take the tube) rather than cycle, as I find the traffic too dangerous now. Back in the day, I cycled the end-to-end, Land's End to John O'Groats and also down the East coast. I did some cycling around London then and enjoyed it. For example, the Grand Union Canal path is a pleasant way to get to and from Heathrow Airport.
Talking of the new river, Enfield have just opened up a new cycle route on the northern leg. Just need to get haringey to do up Green Lanes and you could make a reasonable cycle route pretty much alomgside the entire canal.
Thank you for the excellent video. I noticed on one of the early maps there’s a museum of curiosities just north of the destination. Have you been there? Is it any good?
15K subscribers! Great stuff!
Glad to see that those roads are quiet. I love London, but it is usually extremely noisy from cars. But the sealing of the road is really horrible, and sooo many changes of direction which slows you down… hopefully next projects will think about these bike needs too.
A friend racked up 70 tickets for roads she never used. Photos apparently showed her car and registration… except the offender had one little difference. Cloned plates, what can you do?
Good news: I didn't know about the new crossing in Essex Road and that will be a regular for me.
Bad news: we have a car and drove to Brighton last weekend down Whiston Road and I didn't know they'd put that gate in… hopefully we'll only get a warning PCN as it's new.
Swimmers Lane – as someone noted there's a baths/pool there – Haggerston Baths. But closed in 2000; refurbishment is on the cards but probably won't reinstate the pool.
I liked your little comment about how it's possible to change our towns and cities for the better and I hope that one day the same could happen here in Serbia, where I live. Unfortunately, before we can maybe get there, we are currently dealing with democratic backsliding, truly unbelievable levels of corruption and because of that we are currently having massive anti-government protests ( I'm talking about hundreds of thousands of people ). So let's hope we improve and get to the point where we can deal with issues like traffic management. 🤞
It's always great to see new areas and roads on this channel with every bit of new infrastructure added!
Shame the rest of the U.K. especially South Wales won’t act like TFL
I think you should add a head mounted camera so we can see more of the road, especially at intersections so we get a better view of them. Seeing what you see when you look left andright before you ride on will be a great help. It can be shown on the side and the corner rather than be full screen.
Great videos as always👍👍👏👏
Yes and no (probably no) for being harsh. There may be an element of a route being so familiar people are almost ‘blind’ to the signs and changes, at least initially. Perhaps I’m being too kind?
Great that Whiston Road now has a bus gate! The traffic on Whiston and Pritchards were so awful espeecially with the two incidents there. It has always been a weak link. Whiston and Pritchards was supposed to be closed off a while ago, but Tower Hamlets had a change of local council in 2020 so that didn't happen, sadly. I'm presently working abroad, but looking forward to going back to seeing the improvements. I wonder how much of Pritchards traffic has been shut off.
Top tip for those wishing to stop off for refreshments on that route; the Duke of Wellington pub in Haggerston Rd at 5:16 is a back-street secret with fabulous outdoor space, and the Fish and Chip shop in Haggerston Square at 5:39 is the most amazing food at tremendous value .
You heard it here first 😊
Swimmers Lane is named after Haggerston Baths ( now closed) which you cycled past.
Love the video, as always. Swimmers lane is so called because of the old swimming pool on Whiston Rd – it's on your left at about 6:25. Was a lot of effort made to restore it about 10-15 years ago but to no avail. Also, on the new bus gate being ignored, sometimes councils will send a warning out for a first offence close to a change in rules rather than a fine.
I'm a big fan of these LTNs but it really does look like more needs to be done to improve the public realm and pavements in these areas as cars are still given so much space despite the low numbers of motorists using these streets. Hope Islington does something about this eventually, although of course it's hardly a priority