London to the Lakes on NCN6: Day 1 - London, St Albans, Dunstable скачать в хорошем качестве

London to the Lakes on NCN6: Day 1 - London, St Albans, Dunstable

This is about a tour I did in April this year (2025) - I have only just edited it into something which is, I hope, presentable. I have a lot of clips from other tours from this year which I have filed away on a hard drive so they too might see the light of day sometime! The spring weather was becoming warm and I was keen to be off on my European tour (EV6) as soon as practicable. I had already done several really nice spring tours using YHA hostels in order to keep up my fitness but I decided it would be wise to try a camping trip as well - especially since I had a new tent to try out. It would also test my troublesome arthritic knees with a heavier load. I often browse the map of "all routes" on cycle.travel for inspiration. NCN6 is a route with which I have had many brief encounters in my travels but the idea of doing the whole thing just grabbed me. I was interested to find out how it gets out from the centre of London, to explore the Colne Valley and to revisit the climb from Sheffield to the Peak District which I had done in the dark on SLOTHO Rides West. We rode NCN6 out of Manchester on the LEJOG ride, but then left it for a more easterly route instead of following it to the the Lake District where I haven't cycled for decades! It would also be a chance to visit some well known cycle routes such as the Cloud Trail and POIs such as Foxton Locks. I reckoned I might do it in about 7 to 10 days... Stupidly, I had left it rather late to get travel vaccinations for my trip abroad, and to squeeze these in I was having a rush of appointments, 1 each week. This meant I could only ride for a few days at a time - hence the need to split the tour. I used the route from cycle.travel as the basis for my tour. It fills in the gaps where NCN6 is incomplete. I like cycle.travel because it produces route choices which suit my tastes. Some apps prioritize fast routes and choose too many A and B roads. Some apps based on popularity choose macho routes not suited to an ageing tourist with a load to carry. Cycle.travel usually gets it right for me. The Glitch! There is a problem which can arise with routes from cycle.travel's routes page when you make an alteration. I discovered it on this trip and found it is well known. You look at the route and the track follows the cycle route you want. But then you add or move a "via point" (for example to include an overnight stop); this causes the app to completely recalculate the route linking all the via points which define it, and if it now finds a "better" route between 2 via points than the original one then you will be sent the new way! This is what happened to me in Luton where the new NCN606 was much better than the old urban route that NCN6 followed and the app had calculated that it was better to do a U-turn turn back to the newer route rather than continue past the via point which was supposed to fix the route on the original NCN6. It's not a problem unless you're determined to stick to the original route but it confused me when I had to retrace my route back from the via point near the park and return to the town centre. Incidentally, as I returned, I found there had just been an accident in which a cyclists had been knocked off on a crossing on a junction off a roundabout. The cyclist appeared more shocked than injured but the roads were now gridlocked. I hate that sort of junction where you need eyes in the back of your head! I don't think there's much to say about the ride that isn't in the video. It really was just one nice scene after another (with odd exceptions). I really enjoyed it. The only hard thing was keeping going so far to get to a campsite. Grimthorpe wasn't just a controversial architect of St Albans - he also designed the clock that operates Big Ben and was a high achiever in many fields. His restoration at St Albans was self-funded. The original building, and the whole abbey site were constructed with stone taken from Roman Verulamium - I guess the Romans didn't need it any more so... why not? Grimthorpe's stonework is in a very different style but as I have no taste it seemed ok to me! The downhill/uphill problem at the end happened because I chose what looked like a convenient place to branch off the route and get to the campsite without looking at the contours - genius I am not! The campsite was at Merlin Farm; I liked it and the price was fair but if it gets busy there might be a shortage of facilities. My new tent is a Durston X-Dome. I may discuss it more with another video. Being freestanding is important on some continental sites where the ground is unsuitable for pegs and I wanted to be ready for that on my upcoming long tour. My almost-freestanding Hubba NX1 had decided to leak and I bought a Durston X-mid1 to replace it; it's a superb tent in the UK but it needs secure pegging, so I decided to invest in the X-Dome as well for Europe. Well... Thanks for watching and congratulations of you've also managed to read all of this.