CityCycle

What’s a CityCycle? Ah, it’s a cycling route that is effectively a sightseeing tour of the city. Which city? Well, that depends on the route!

All cities have good and bad points. All cities have things people like to see, and places people like to visit. The aim of CityCycle routes is to take local knowledge to build route guides for various UK cities, and YOUR help is needed.

Local knowledge is key!

To create a good CityCycle route, local knowledge is essential. After all, local cyclists know which sights are worth seeing, and which are worth avoiding. They know all the shortcuts, and route alterations, to avoid nasty, busy roads. YOU know these things.

Crowdsourced routes

CityCycle routes on WillCycle will always be open, and free to access, just like my DayCycle route guides are. The trouble is, I don’t have the local knowledge needed. But YOU do.

This is why I’m asking you to help me build these routes. You’d be helping countless others, who over the years will be using the route guide you helped design. And besides, it’s a great excuse to hop on your bike, and go re-explore your city. Try to be a tourist, and look at everything with fresh eyes.

How to help

There are a number of ways to help. For starters, go to the top of the class if you send me a link to a route you plotted on RideWithGPS (it’s free!) And extra bonus points if you tell me why the route follows the course that it does, and give me at least the names of landmarks along the route.

That’s a big ask, but you could still help without doing that. You could, for example, name a bunch of sights worth seeing in your city (ideally telling why they’re worth seeing, too) and I can start working from that.

Preferences

My preference is always for circular routes, and even more so, when they start and end at a mainline train station. That’s simply to avoid cycling the same route twice, but sometimes a there-and-back, linear route might be unavoidable.

Good routes will have not only good sights along the way, but also avoid nasty and busy roads, with bonus points for traffic-free cycling options.

Here’s where it gets interesting: I’d like you to imaging cycling the route with a new and nervous cyclist. Where will you stop? What are your escape points, should you need some? How safe is the route – is it sheltered from view, narrow and dark? Would an average woman feel safe cycling it on her own? What would you change if you wanted to take two kids, around the age of 10, along on the ride? Where are the café stops? And the toilets?

Men, we need a word

Look, I think it’s great that you can sprint up to speeds of 30mph, and that your average speed, while commuting is 25mph. While all that may be athletically impressive, for these purposes, I couldn’t care less, as these routes are explicitly NOT designed to Tour de France wannabes.

These are meant to be leisure routes, for people to cycle at a slower pace, and to stop often. If that doesn’t describe your cycling, move along please – nothing for you to see here.

Getting details to me

This is easy: simply comment on this post! If you wanted to send me a GPX file of a route, still comment, and tell me so, and I’ll email you directly.

For every CityCycle route guide, I will proudly give credit, and list the contributors. Please do understand that these routes are open for discussion. What that means is, if you provided a GPX, but over time several others suggested changes, I’ll go with the majority. That’s not criticism – it’s simply trying to end up with a route that suits most people.

We’re not limited to just one route per city, so even if your city already has one such route, if you can add another, well, the more, the merrier!

Open-access!

All CityCycle route guides will be free to access, and – just like you can, with my traffic-free DayCycle route guides – you’d be able to download the GPX or TCX file for any particular ride, directly from the route guide page. Again, like with my DayCycle guides, I will list some refreshment stops and some places where these are toilets. I’ll also try and include safe(ish?) places to lock up your bike.

Please will you help? And thank you!