The Rough & The Smooth Of Bike Trails
I was working in Wallsend this morning, and then had to pop into Newcastle for a couple of things, finishing up with dropping something off with Carlton Reid. Whenever he’s come to my house he’s come along the Coast Road - it’s arrow-straight, and runs from the edge of Newcastle to, uh, the coast (Coast Road - the clue’s kinda in the name!)
So it was obvious which way to go home, except I’m not as brave as Carlton. The Coast Road is basically a motorway, with three lanes running in each direction, and traffic at 70mph.
So I went along the shared-use cycle track that runs alongside. Initially, I made good time, with a gentle tailwind I was doing 25mph without even breaking into a sweat. But then I ran out of nice new smooth path, and had to ride along about 1 1/2 miles of rather tired, lumpy, and broken up tarmac. Speed dropped to 12mph, and even that wasn’t particularly comfortable. Damned hard work in fact.
This highlights the importance of a good surface for riding a bike at a good pace with ease.
It’s true that you can ride bikes off-roads (I’ve even heard of some new-fangled version of a bike that’s specifically designed for riding over the grass verges alongside roads and trails. Apparently they’re called ‘mountain bikes’), but for an easy ride - the sort of ride that might tempt people out of their cars, you need a top-quality surfaces.
Some of the trail alongside the Coast Road has been recently resurfaced, and I’m hoping that the rest of it will soon get the same treatment. As it was, it took just under 25 minutes to get from Jesmond to the beach. That’s probably about five minutes faster than you could drive it during the rush hour.
Dual carriageways are not for the faint hearted (and I’d count myself in that).
Feels to me as though you’re just waiting for someone to clip you.
Is the bit you are talking about the track on the north side of the coast road? If it is then there is also the annoying breaks where you have to dip down under the coast road and have to stop and cross at a series of junctions before going up the other side. Tell me I have been going the wrong way please, and the south side has some great track that hasnt these annoying breaks.
John - yep, some stretches of dual carriageway are OK-ish, but most are just a disaster waiting to happen. Because you’re moving so much slower than the traffic, it’s almost impossible for drivers to judge their rate of closure on you. There have been a couple of cyclists killed on dual carriageways near here in the last couple of years in this way, and as a result, I’ve added an extra mile to one of my regular commuting trips just to avoid one of these roads (the A19 south of the Tyne Tunnel, for anyone local)
Spacemonkee77 - sadly, no. It’s the track on the North Side. Rather than go all the way down to the junctions, I stay on the track and cross the sliproads. It’s not quite so bloody awful when you’re heading into Newcastle, as each time you cross the road, you’re facing the on-coming traffic. But heading back down to the coast, you have to look over your shoulder as you approach them. Now that I write this, the I’m thinking that the potential for an accident there is pretty high - the incoming traffic is routinely doing 50-60mph.
As all of the sliproads (off ramps) are filter lanes (the road’s 3 lanes, with the inside one becoming the slip road at every junction), maybe there’s a possibility of adding some sort of graded speed limit to get drivers to slow down as they come off the road . . . ?
I’ve done too many miles on Britain’s dual carriageways. Perhaps the most scary bit was in Cornwall being passed by parallel trucks on the shoulderless A30 NE from Bodmin.
However, single carriageway A roads can be less than amusing too. The A82 Glasgow to Fort William and beyond was particularly memorable - for huge logging trucks who generally gave plenty of space when passing, and Nissan Micras that did not.
These are the sorts of roads that are cycled on on only because they are no (viable) alternatives.