Cycling in England: A bike ride from a 900-year-old priory to a Victorian seaside town

This ride is a shout-out to Britain’s National Cycle Network, which got us so much of the way from a few miles north of Mottisfont to Swanage.

National Route 24! And 24! And 236!

Is the National Cycle Network perfect? Certainly not. Are there gaps? Yes. Have some sections been deemed no longer safe and therefore decommissioned? Yes. But it still pieces together enough biking infrastructure — and is sufficiently signposted — to make this 56-mile ride pretty comfortable.

On that connectivity … I’ll compare it to a tree. The trunk is a route like National Route 2. Then there are bigger branches, like Route 24, and smaller branches, like Route 236.

I wish we’d copy some of this this in the U.S. instead of waiting for large, expensive and “perfect” projects. You know, only 10-foot paved multi-use paths and nothng else counts. Use less-busy roads as needed and signpost the route! Show people it is possible to get around beyond a car. Then upgrade as needed and fill in the gaps.

So what did we see?

Our route started near Mottisfont, once an abbey, then deconsecrated by Henry VIIIbut home to a gorgeous collection of roses. It took us past Broadlands (Lord Mountbatten’s home outside Romsey), through the New Forest and its wild ponies, along the old Southampton and Dorchester Railway, past the sunbathers frolicking on the beach in Bournemouth and to the ferry that took us (and another dozen cyclists plus many cars) across the narrow entrance to Poole Harbor. From there it was just one killer hill between us and Swanage.

So many horses!

We took a break in Lyndhurst, a posh town at the edge of the New Forest (the giveaway is the Ferrari dealership in its heart). Lots of independent shops, including a bike store/rental with a cafe.

And in Swanage? This is more of a gravel or mountain bike sort of place, taking advantage of England’s tradition of public rights of way through farms and other private property. Bridle paths are open to cyclists; footpaths are not. We were taken on what essentially was a portion of this Bikepacking.com route.

There’s also plenty of long walks, made more accessible with the bus. No bikes on the bus.

We let Komoot determine our route to Swanage, giving it just the start and end points. Oddly it deviated from the National Cycle Route a few times for a random block or two — so much easier to just follow the signs. And it thought we could just turn left off the old railway line onto another path — only it was many, many feet below. We ended up walking our bikes up a hill on the side of a busy road, realizing only later that perhaps we could have continued further on the railroad line and looped back to our route.

A sign along the way. Imagine this in the U.S.!

Where next?

So you want to keep biking? Instead of heading north, what about France? You can catch the morning ferry to Cherbourg from Poole Harbor. To catch the 8:30 boat, we made sure we took the first ferry of the day to Poole (Sandbanks) at 7:10 a.m. Google said it would take 49 minutes to bike there; we did it in about 35 minutes, even with a hill.

After the quick ferry, it was another 4 miles or so to the ferry to France. Check out this waterfront path that keeps walkers and bikers separated!

We biked right up to the boat. Five hours later, we were in France.