🚲 A brilliant new way to cycle from Leyton to Stoke Newington traffic-free in 18 minutes

You can cycle from Leyton in north east London to Stoke Newington in north entirely on quiet streets and protected cycle lanes.

The route is 5.6km long (3.5 miles) and makes use of new infrastructure including protected lanes on Lea Bridge Road and roundabout, plus the Dunedin Rd LTN and Hackney Downs LTN.

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/2663611479?share_token=aaQvm1BH4fCOW2wWhSsNvZvH56BzEWqY3UmydI0U7g9ZekS0v1&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=51.505213496092054%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=51.516975804561255%2C-0.21828576419061996&z=12

The consultation on a new junction referenced in the video is available here:

https://consultations.wearecamden.org/supporting-communities/yorkway-junction/

Hello and welcome back to London Cycle Roots. Today I’ll be showing you how to cycle from Leighton in northeast London to Stoke Newington in North London. This ride takes about 18 minutes and you can do the whole thing on quiet streets and protected cycle lanes. By public transport, the same journey takes between half an hour and 45 minutes, although the fastest option requires use of the tube, the overground, and the bus. So, cycling is an absolute no-brainer for taking 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 everyone 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 on High Road Leighton by the KFC and we’re going to turn around and head into Dunin Road. In autumn 2025, Walpen Forest Council put in a new traffic scheme on the streets west of High Road Leighton, removing through traffic from them. As a result, they now create a really nice low traffic link west from Leighton in the direction that we’re going. For motor vehicles, this street ends in a culdeac. But for people cycling and on foot, there is actually a little permeable link that connects these residential streets to a main road cycle way. It comes in the form of this ramp on our right here, which we’re going to take. If you have trouble with the barriers because you’re using a cargo bike or larger adapted cycle, you might want to take a short detour on York Road and Rockalt Road to bypass it, which is slightly less direct, but still gets you to the same place to join this cycle way down Orient Way. If you look on your left through the fence here, you should just be able to make out a Euroar train. Uh that is because this is the Temple Mills depot where international trains to and from the UK are maintained. The depot has actually been in the news a bit as it was subject to a dispute between Euroar and various Challenger operators that want to use it as well and compete with Euroar. Euroar complained that there was conveniently no space for anyone else to use it and so sadly nobody could compete with them. But just this week, a company operating under the Virgin Trains brand was actually granted access to use it by the rail regulator and should start running competing services through the Channel Tunnel from 2030. The Orient Way cycle way is nothing fancy, but it does the job of providing a protected traffic-free route along this main road, which would otherwise be pretty horrible to cycle on. It’s a little bit on the narrow side, but I’ve never seen it super busy. Probably a bigger downside is the way that it deals with occasional side roads. There aren’t too many, but when it meets them, it deals with them slightly inconsistently. We went past one a minute ago where there was actually a giveway line and you had to yield to the side road. So any vehicles coming out of that would have priority, but we’re approaching one just here where you actually do have priority over the side road, at least according to these markings here. In a second, we’re also going to see another one where we don’t have priority over vehicles entering the retail park. So it’s all a little bit confusing. My advice would be to not assume that drivers are going to stop no matter what the markings say. The traffic pulling in and out of these side roads is pretty infrequent, so doing that isn’t going to inconvenience you much, and it really is better to be safe than sorry in this case, especially as you’re going to be seeing things like HGVs, which come with their own risks like blind spots as well. Probably one of the more impressive bits of infrastructure on today’s route is coming up just now at the junction with Leebridge Road. This is a really nicely done protected cycleway junction where pedestrians and bikes all get a simultaneous green in their own phase. It keeps everyone separated from motor traffic and makes it easy to do things like turn right, which isn’t always easy on other designs. London is a bit behind when it comes to protected junctions compared to even other cities in the UK like Manchester and Sulford. But uh also cities abroad, I think there are quite a lot of examples of that in the US for example, which isn’t always noted for its good cycle infrastructure. Uh so far only Waltham Forest Council has built protected junctions like that, but fortunately the design does seem to be filtering through to other parts of the capital. There are several currently under construction on the Romford Road Corridor by Newham Council and that’s going to be a brilliant cycle way when it’s done. Make sure you’re subscribed to the channel on YouTube as I’ll definitely be doing plenty of videos showing that off when it’s finished. There are also plans to build a protected junction like that on the Camden Islington border at York Way and that is currently out for consultation. So, I’ll put a link to that consultation in the description so that you can respond to it and give your views. The cycle lane protection gives up briefly here as we cross the riverly, but it starts again immediately as we cross into the London burough of Hackne. Hackne hasn’t always been great at building protected lanes along main roads, but there’s a really nice exception here where they’ve extended the Leebridge Road cycle lanes into their territory and done a really decent job. I think in the opposite direction, the lane actually veers into Milfield’s recreation ground and runs a few feet from the road. You can just about see the path there beyond those trees. So, just be aware of that if you’re doing this route in the opposite direction. It is all a protected traffic through route. Although, I have heard some people say that they’ve had bad experiences using the path in the park at night. So, that is something to take into account. There is another really cool piece of infrastructure coming up here at the end of Leebridge Road. Leebridge roundabout used to be an absolute black hole for cycling. It was fast, multi-lane, and you had to cycle with traffic. Not anymore. For the last couple of years, it’s had protected lanes running around it. And as you’re seeing here, it’s now incredibly easy to ride through without interacting with any traffic at all. We’re actually through in a flash here. We get a green light straight away and no problem. That’s not always the case. You sometimes do have to wait a while at those lights, but it’s clearly a massive improvement on what was here before. And crucially, it removes what was basically a huge barrier to getting around this part of London by bike. It is such a central junction in this corner of London that it was really difficult to avoid previously, but you don’t need to anymore. The roundabout then puts you onto Kenning Hall Road, and we’re just on the main carriageway here without lanes. This street is actually part of a low traffic neighborhood, the Hackne Downs LTN. And as such, there’s no through traffic on it. You can still see that there are a few cars around though, and that’s because this street kind of acts as a distributor road and entry point to the LTN, which is quite a large area. So, a lot of cars traveling to destinations within this area, even though they’re not passing through the area, there are still quite a few of them. Um, it’s not as quiet as some of the streets in the LTN, but it’s still fine to ride on, I think. And you can see that there are plenty of people doing that today without any problems. What’s cool about today’s video, I think, is that it would have been impossible a few years ago without cycling in heavy traffic. The Dunes Road filters at the beginning are brand new. Orient way is pre- pandemic, as is the first bit of Leebridge Road, but Hackne section of Leebridge Road was only finished last year. And Leebridge roundabout is, as we’ve heard, also pretty new. Hackne Down’s LTN, which we’re in now, was introduced in September 2020. So, these streets were previously a lot less quiet, particularly Kenny Hall Road, which we were just on. It does show what a difference these changes are making and the journeys that they’re enabling people to do without having to be very brave and cycle in heavy traffic, which a majority of people just are never going to be prepared to do. Now, this last bit of the route taking us to Stoke Newington High Street is one way. So if you’re doing this route in reverse, you probably want to go via Evering Road, which is one way in the opposite direction. In my view though, Hackne Council should probably put a contraflow cycle lane along here, as it will be a small change that would improve the permeability of this area quite a bit on a bike. I’m going to briefly saunter down Lawrence buildings here just to get a little bit further north before I end on the high street. We’re going to end the video next to the Jolly Butchers Pub, which I think is a bit of a landmark in Stoke Newington. You can just see it on our right here. And there’s the main high street as well right in front of us. So, thank you so much for sticking with me for that. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you find it useful. If you like the video, do hit like on YouTube as it does help other people find it. Kind of boosts it in the algorithm. If you really like what we’re doing on the channel, make sure you hit subscribe as well as I post new videos pretty much every week. Let me know in the comments what you think of all that. Is there anything you would do differently to what I’ve done here? And would you like to see any other routes in the area tackled in a video like this? I’m always willing to take suggestions and ideas. Thank you once again to everyone who supports the channel on Patreon. I really appreciate it. Do check out the link in the description below the video. If you’d also like to contribute, you can throw money at me there. Really appreciate it and it does really help keep the channel going. And yeah, I will link to that consultation to the new protected cycle junction on the Camden Islington border as well on York Way. I’ll stick a link to that in the description. So, while you’re down there, do check it out and tell them what you think of the design. Personally, I think it’s very good, but I would also include a link to Brandon Road, which would definitely enable some new cycle routes. So, if you think that too, then do let them know. There’s also a digital map of the route in the description, and you can find that below the video, too. Thanks all for watching, and I’ll see you all again next time. Goodbye.