Discover the UK’s best traffic-free cycle routes

Below are some of the most recent route guides, but be sure to visit the UK-wide map, showing all the route guides. All routes have a custom WillCycle map, from which you can download the GPX for the route, and where you can see the route profile in detail.

The route guides include an up-to-date weather forecast, and lots of information about the route. It even tells how how long it would take to cycle, at your preferred speed.

Featured routes

These are just some of the stunning routes I have highly-detailed guides for. Refresh the page to see more routes.

Peak Forest & Ashton Canals

Peak Forest & Ashton Canals Overall Rating: ⭐⭐ Stretching for 14 miles from Marple into the centre of Manchester, the Peak Forest Canal and Ashton Canal combine to form a delightful traffic-free route. As you’d expect from a canal towpath route, it’s mainly flat, but do take care at several...
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Cambridge Guided Busway

Cambridge Guided Busway Cycle Route Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ The Cambridge Guided Busway was originally built as a service road for the busway. Sadly, when it floods (as it does from time to time) the local authority refuses to do anything about it, claiming it’s a service road. However, when talking...
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Manifold Way Traffic-free Cycle Route

Manifold Way cycle route overall rating: (Colour explanation: blue = good, yellow indicates some warning, and red indicates issues to be aware of) Manifold Way gets its name from the River Manifold, and that in turn started out as “many folds”, referring to the many meanders. It is a trail...
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Alton Water cycle route

Alton Water itself is a reservoir in Suffolk, just south of Ipswitch. This 7.5 mile traffic-free cycle route guide is for the route that encircles the reservoir. Depending on the season, and the maintenance schedule, parts of the route may be somewhat overgrown. Alton Water overall route rating: (Colour explanation:...
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Formartine and Buchan Way cycle route

Formartine and Buchan Way overall cycle route rating: (Colour explanation: blue = good, yellow indicates some warning, and red indicates issues to be aware of) The Formartine and Buchan Way follows a disused railway from Dyce (near Aberdeen) to Maud. At Maud, it branches, and you can opt to ride...
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Even more value

WillCycle Supporters gain even more value, including achievement badges, and more, as well as Strava integration.

These route guides are all made with 🚲 in Devon.

Latest from the blog

  • Treasure Hunt: A Cycling Adventure You Can’t Plan For
    Somewhere along some of WillCycle’s traffic-free routes, there are stickers hidden. Those were been placed there deliberately, in a spot that requires effort to reach. It won’t appear on any map. Nobody is going to tell you where it is. And the first WillCycler to find it and send proof will have their first name … Read more
  • Why one map is never enough
    We’ve all been there: you planned a glorious route for a bike ride. You checked OS Maps and confirmed it’s a bridleway that you may legally use. You planned a 50 mile loop, using that bridleway to avoid a nasty, busy A-road. Then you arrive, and that “legal right of way” is a chest-high sea … Read more
  • Lanterne Rouge Ride
    In the Tour de France, the Lanterne Rouge is the rider who finishes dead last. They are the survivor, the tail-light in the dark, and if we’re being honest, the person who probably had the most interesting day. While the hardcore roadies are busy staring at their power meters and sweating through their Lycra to … Read more
  • The Breakfast Club
    Those of you who (like me) are of a certain age, will probably fondly remember the film The Breakfast Club. Released in 1985, it brilliantly tells the story of a bunch of teenagers doing after-school detention. This post is entirely unrelated to that movie, except for a gratuitous intro paragraph, and the same name. Cycling … Read more