Cycled into Cambridge to pick up new spectacles and reminded myself just how pants the route is for cycles from Trumpington to the too-small bike park at the Grand Arcade. Consoled myself by imagining the running commentary of my bell.
what??? the guided bus way to the railway station then backroads across mill road through to norfolk street, stop for a coffee at the deli (hot numbers' coffee seems to have taken a turn for the worse) then wiggle through to the bike racks outside the unspeakable cath kid5on shop. Do the shopping then get 250 grams of bliss from the coffee man, a bunch of flowers from the stall beside him then head home via hobsons conduit and the much better cycleway out of town to trumpton. Lovely adventure.
+1 to deli and coffee man at the market, but the route in is a disaster IMO...
Come over the M11 on the new cycleway - all fine. This dumps you out at the entry to park and ride. Cycleway signs to Shelfords and Addenbrooke's, no signs for City Centre. Take the bus road through the Park and Ride car park, use local knowledge to navigate roundabout (mainly used by coaches) to entry to guided busway (note: total absense of signage from new traffic lights with regards to how to get to station/city centre on bike). Or follow the cycle path (well, foothpath with token blue sign) up over the staggered ped/cycle crossings at the new development (maximum cycle inconvenience), past Waitrose (again, you either mix it with the traffic on the roads or spend ages waiting for pedestrians on the pavements), fight past the Shell garage until you finally get to the decent stretch of cycle way which does whisk you into town.
You're right that the guided busway to the station and then up across Parker's Piece is the better option though - I had been avoiding that because of the chaos at the station. What gets my goat is that the P&R,new housing and Guided Busway are all new developments and could/should have been planned to maximise cycle/pedestrian flowthrough; instead we have maximum inconveinence (staggered crossings so you have to wait for two sets of lights to cross a road, one for each lane), no signage and non-obvious routes.
On a totally unrelated note, do you know how the coffee is at Relevant Records?