There are now many apps which allow you to access OS mapping on a smartphone; check out www.viewranger.com for example. A good alternative to OS mapping is Open Cycle Map (www.opencyclemap.org). Alternatively, there’s much to recommend a dedicated bike computer, which will allow you to keep your phone safely stowed, and conserve its battery. The simplest cycle computers cost little more than £10 while GPS-based ones start around £75. Most GPS computers can be used for navigation as well as for tracking rides, and many will display simplified maps as well as giving turn-by-turn directions. Garmin (www.garmin.com/en-GB) is by far the best-known name in this field; I’ve recently been using their Edge Touring Plus, which comes pre-loaded with maps of the UK and Europe.
Using any computer or tracking app will soon give you a sense of the average speed you can expect to achieve on a bike. This is a great help in planning your rides, as estimating times for cycling is notoriously more difficult than for walking. Walking speeds vary much less and there are many formulae and rules of thumb enabling you to work out how long a walk may take: Naismith’s Rule is the best-known, if not necessarily the best.
Cycling speeds vary for many reasons; fitness, aerodynamics, the load you’re packing, and so on. Hills will slow you down, but cyclists have much more chance than walkers of taking some time back on the descent – at least when there’s a reasonable surface and it’s not too twisty. For example, the descent from Merrybent to Slaidburn at the end of Stage 2 is a good one; the descent from Marl Hill on Day Ride 7 is not (at least until they fix the road surfaces).
Still, even if your name is Chris Froome, average speed in the hills will be less than on the flat. If you’re a bit more ordinary than Froomey, the time taken to cover a given distance may increase by up to 50% for the hillier stages; perhaps even more if you’re heavily laden.
Using this guide
This guide is divided into sections, averaging around 40 kilometres in length. The endpoints of these sections are either reasonable candidates for an overnight stop, or places with a train service, or often both. It’s hoped that this structure will help in planning your trip around the Cycleway, but these are only suggestions and there are many alternative stopping-points.
Each chapter includes a detailed description of the route to be followed, accompanied by a route map, usually at 1:200,000 scale. In addition to the maps, there are route profiles for most stages. If there isn’t one, you can assume that it it’s flat!
At the start of each stage of the route you’ll also find a box telling you:
where the route description starts
the total length of the stage
the total ascent
a brief outline of the nature of the actual riding (how hilly it is, how busy the roads are likely to be, and so on)
the maximum gradient encountered (if this line is missing, the stage has no climbs of note)
OS maps (Landranger sheets needed)
an outline of train services on or near the route
a general indication of where pubs, B&Bs and so on are plentiful and where they are thin on the ground: for more on accommodation, see Appendix A, Further information
intermediate distances: cumulative distances of intermediate points from the stage start
Each stage is preceded by an introduction giving a brief sketch of the character, scenery and major points of interest of the stage, and the route descriptions mention places of refreshment along the way. It’s a scientific fact that cyclists need lots of refreshment!
THE NORTHERN LOOP
208.5km/130 miles
Loyn Bridge (Stage 1)
INTRODUCTION
The Northern Loop embodies everything that’s great about cycling in Lancashire. As a Tour de France stage it would be considered a moderate test, neither very long nor very mountainous, and would be knocked off in under six hours. However, if you would rather take six days over it, you will see more – a great deal more – and probably experience less pain and much more pleasure as a result.
As with any circular route, the first question is where to start. You might settle this by considering whether you would rather get the hilly part out of the way early on, or ease yourself in on the flatter stuff. However, if you are arriving by train, Lancaster is the logical starting place and gives you a fairly gentle introduction, then the major climbs, and finally a long, mostly easy winding-down. It’s also historically appropriate, Lancaster being the traditional county town.
The Lancaster Link, following an old railway line out of the city alongside the River Lune, is a painless opening. You meet the official Cycleway route as you cross the river into Halton, the first of many attractive villages along the way. A short climb lifts you onto a ridge which gives prospects of things to come. You descend to Carnforth, then enter the Arnside and Silverdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the name nearly as long as the area itself: this is the second-smallest mainland AONB.
Intricate and genuinely pretty, it may be small, but clichés about quarts and pint pots are almost irresistible. The often-leafy lanes twist and wriggle, and it would be easy to take a wrong turning, except that there are no wrong turnings here. However, if you follow the route as described, you’ll get only the merest glimpse of the coast. It could be worth taking the short extra loop to Arnside (in Cumbria), which has a Youth Hostel as well as a great outlook over the Kent estuary.
The main route flirts with the Cumbrian border as it leaves the AONB, then crosses a corridor of flat country through which run the West Coast Main Line, Lancaster Canal and the M6. A quiet, undulating interlude charms its way across to the Lune Valley. There’s a tucked-away feel to this patch of country, and some of the most traffic-free riding anywhere on the Cycleway.
As you sweep down into the Lune Valley, the great ridge of the Bowland Fells looms ahead. The climb begins soon after crossing the river, ascending by stages from wooded valleys, through more open pastures and out onto the wide moors.
A long steady climb, which gets steeper just when you least want it to, Cross O’Greet is mean, moody – and magnificent. Not just for the views, either, sensational though they are. The climb itself – the actual business of getting up it on a bike – is genuinely challenging, perhaps all-consuming. But if you pace yourself, and your bike has the right gears, you can do it. And those views are infinitely better because you’ve got there by your own efforts.
Then there’s the descent. Cooled yet elated, you swoop down into the warm little village of Slaidburn. Few things will ever taste better than that first pint at the Hark to Bounty or mug of tea at the café by the bridge.
From Slaidburn there’s a bit more climbing, a mere bagatelle after Cross O’Greet, and then a grand section over a rumpled upland before you drop into the Ribble Valley. The local tourist office is fond of repeating that the Queen once said she’d like to retire to this area. One can see why: it encompasses a lot of proper English countryside, with small fields, hedgerows and a richness of trees, bounded by skylines of rock, peat, sedge and heather. Pretty villages – most of them not at all self-conscious about their prettiness – crop up at regular intervals.
At the heart of the valley is Clitheroe, one of the nicest small towns in England, clustered round a castle that surely never intimidated anyone. If Castle Street were traffic-free, Clitheroe would be just about perfect. As it is, maybe it’s a good thing that the Cycleway sidles past just to the north. Then there’s Whalley, with its serene Abbey ruins, and Ribchester, another handsome village and a significant Roman site.
In