Yesterday was my first attempt at a mandatory DIY-by-GPS route. I was very pleased with it, on the whole, though the admin was a nightmare.
The ride was brilliant, and in perfect weather - it would only work as a mandatory route, really, as I took inspiration from Uncle Peter's adventures on the canalways of Lancashire, and it was a mix of offroad and quiet lanes. My kind of terrain, that. However, it being County Durham, we don't have many canals, but we do have a lot of disused railways.
The river path along the Tees from Stockton to Middlesbrough is fantastic - best of all, there's pretty much no need to ride through Middlesbrough. There is an Eight Bridges cycle route, too. I only used four - Victoria Bridge, Infinity Bridge, Tees Barrrage, and finally I crossed the Transporter Bridge (open, for once) and rode across Dormans Pond and Seal Sands. It's an amazing route. Seals, seabirds, cows lazing in the water, oil refineries, chemical plants, cooling towers and a nuclear power station.
I did have to ride through the middle of Hartlepool, but I kept my Darlo badge under wraps, and from Hartlepool north it was the Hart-Haswell path, the Castle Eden walkway and the Hawthorn-Ryhope cycleway, which were mostly pretty well-surfaced. Mostly. There was a rough, muddy bit near Haswell, and a wooden walkway across a bog which I wouldn't fancy riding in the wet. It was covered with netting which provided some grip, but the netting was frayed, so I was as concerned about punctures as anything else.
It's still a better route across East Durham than any road I've found - Murton and Easington have their charms, no doubt, but the roads are shite.
It was an almost-imperceptible drag up from Poolie, and an equally-gentle drop back down to the land of the Mackems, which was another city centre blast, over the Wear and up the coast with the sea to my right and the salty smell in my nostrils. I just missed the Shields Ferry, and pissed away a half hour, even before the slow progress through the throngs along the path to Tynemouth and through the honeypots of Whitley Bay and Cullercoats.
Blyth was strangely empty by comparison*, and is blessed with pretty well-surfaced cyclepaths. They are a bit meandery, but far better than riding along the A189, and it was a purely functional bit anyway, to get me up to the Northumberland Coast and Druridge Bay. It's a gorgeous bit of the world,
about to be ruined by an opencast mine. I got chatting to an Aussie cyclist, and we both bemoaned the decision. There's millions of tons of coal left under the sea, or under Easington, and they could probably replace Easington with a hole in the ground before anyone noticed, let alone cared.
For the time being, though, it's a fantastic bit of coastline, with a lovely track across the dunes. My Aussie wheelmate looked at my bike and said that you wouldn't ride it on a road bike, and goggled a bit when I told him that was exactly where I was going. As I say, my kind of terrain - comedy offroading.
I turned back from Amble to Morpeth, which had been the catalyst for the ride, to use up an unused** open return from Morpeth. The last 50 km was rather hilly, certainly by comparison, but with such views, over to the Cheviots on one side and down to the sea at the other. A stop for a pint at the Dyke Neuk to string things out before my train, and all downhill for the last 10 km through Mitford to Morpeth.
https://www.strava.com/activities/666949517I may have cocked up the admin, but it's a great system - I couldn't have ridden that route any other way, as there'd have always been a persistent voice reminding me that I'd have to ride along the A189 or wherever, just to keep the distance within sensible margins. At times, I did miss the freedom to wander off course, and had to keep a tight leash on my exploring instinct, but as a mechanism for riding long distances, it's fantastic, and it opens up loads of potential routes.
*It won't be in a few weeks when the tall ships come to town:
http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/tall-ships-blyth-you-need-11711872**FSVO unused***
***And still technically unused