Ten great rides for the heatwave
- Simon Weir
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
With great weather forecast, grab your helmet and have a good time
I’m old enough that Michael Fish shattered my faith in forecasters, but the meteorological establishment seems pretty united in predictions of great weather coming up. That means one thing: time to get the bike out.
My advice: don’t just ride your regular old route – treat yourself to a trip and make the best of the brilliant weather. There are more than 400 routes in the daytrips pages for mainland Britain alone, so there will be one near you. But with a bank holiday weekend rapidly approaching, maybe there’s time for a slightly bigger break.
To help you pick a fresh ride, here are ten of my favourite rides for a sunny day – from an afternoon out to a long weekend.
10 Rye’s miles
Start/finish: Rye • Distance: 45 miles • Riding time: ±1.25hrs
Shortest first – though you’ll need to allow time to reach Rye. This little loop from A-Z Britain for Bikers makes a break for the beach – twice, heading from Camber Sands to Dungeness before swinging inland. It’s short, sweet and stunning on a sunny day. Go on, you know you deserve that ice cream at the Mermaid when you get back to Rye…
9 Carmarthen loop
Start/finish: Carmarthen • Distance: 75 miles • Riding time: ±2hrs
The seaside tends to be a theme with sunny-day rides, but sometimes it gets busy by the coast. So this relaxed ride – also from A-Z Britain for Bikers – sticks to quieter inland roads for the most part, only swinging out to the seaside for a cone of chips / drink / refreshment of your choice around halfway through the loop, before cutting back to the shady wooded lanes.
8 Stowmarket loop
Start/finish: Stowmarket • Distance: 150 miles • Riding time: ±4hrs
I’m not saying I’ll definitely be riding this loop… but if I ignore my own advice to go somewhere new, I’ll probably be riding something similar. So many of my favourite local roads are on this laid-back ride. What we lack in hills, we make up for with quiet, twisty, entertaining roads and unspoilt countryside that looks gorgeous in the sunshine. “I never guessed there were roads like this around here,” my friend Sam said when we did this ride. Well, now he knows… and you do too…
7 Alston south loop
Start/finish: Alston • Distance: 155 miles • Riding time: ±4.5hrs
If the thought of crowded coasts and busy Bank Holiday tourist traps like the Lake and Peak districts doesn’t appeal, head to the wide-open spaces of the Pennines. Alston’s a brilliant little town and all the roads in and out are good to ride. This loop from Bikers’ Britain avoids the holiday hotspots while packing in so many awesome roads – from the iconic Hartside Pass to some far less famous but equally good ones. It's just one day on the bike but it'll feel like the trip of a lifetime.
6 Campbelltown
Start/finish: Oban • Distance: 215 miles • Riding time: ±5.5hrs
This is a slightly expanded version of the Oban Loop from Bikers’ Britain – mixing in some scenic single-track roads and hopping a ferry from Tarbert to make it feel even more adventurous (putting your bike on a boat makes it a proper trip – even CalMac counts). Stunning roads and scenery, plus enough seaside amenities in Oban and Campbelltown to satisfy that ice-cream urge…
5 Cotswolds two-day tour
Start/finish: Aylesbury • Total distance: 320 miles • Average daily riding time: ±4.75hrs
It’s easy to get cynical about touring in Britain – too much traffic, too many potholes, yadda-yadda… Well, I don’t believe it. There’s so much great riding in this country and you don’t have to go all the way to Scotland to find it. Researching and testing this laid-back two day trip from Bikers’ Britain: The Tours was one of the highlights of updating the last edition. It’s two brilliant days in the heart of England's greenest and pleasantest countryside – all honey-stone villages, leafy lanes and brilliant twisty roads.
4 Borders two-day tour
Start/finish: Dumfries • Duration: two days • Total distance: 435 miles • Average daily ride: ±5hrs
If you do want to ride in Scotland, it isn’t necessary to battle through the city belt between Glasgow and Edinburgh. There’s fabulous riding in the Borders – and as it’s the least-populous part of the country, the roads are quiet. This laid-back two-day trip from Bikers’ Britain: The Tours doesn’t quite go coast-to-coast, but is packed with brilliant riding in Scotland and England.
3 The Eastmost-to-Westmost run
Start: Lowestoft • Finish: Ardnamurchan • Duration: two days • Total distance: 600 miles • Average daily riding time: ±6.5hrs
This is often done as a longest-day challenge, setting off at dawn and trying to span the width of the country – from Ness Point, the easternmost point on the British mainland, to Ardnamurchan lighthouse, the most westerly point – before the sun gets down. Without motorway. I did that as a feature when I was on RiDE: would my Kawasaki ZZR1400 get there faster than a big-tanked adventure bike or a big tourer? Yes, but only because we ended up not racing and the guys just followed me… so I won by a bike-length or two.
Doing it in a single day really is making hard work of it… Okay, it’s challenging, rewarding maybe, but ultimately exhausting and not half as much fun as taking twice as much time. Even taking two days for it still means full days in the saddle (and you need to factor in time to get home again) but this feels like enjoyable touring, not some kind of endurance time-trial. Still memorable, just more manageable.
2 Scotland High Mile Tour
Start/finish: Moffat • Duration: three days • Total distance: 930 miles • Average daily riding time: ±6.5hrs
Okay, I admit… it is hard to beat the riding in the north of Scotland. If you like big-mile days, this three-day tour has everything: the Borders, the Cairngorms, the Highlands, the West Coast and even a bit of Skye. It’s definitely not a trip I’d do two-up… but if I could slink away for a few days in the forecast good weather, I’d love to spend those days re-riding this route. From single-track roads to fast sweepers, with one amazing landscape after another, it’s a brilliant big-mile blast.
1 The East Coast 500
Start/finish: Bishops Stortford • Duration: 3-4 days • Total distance: 500 + 215 miles • Average daily ride: ±5hrs
If you cast your mind back to the Covid crisis, everyone was talking about not going touring abroad… and it seemed the world and his wife (UK edition) were heading to Scotland to “do” the North Coast 500 instead. And while that’s a great ride, I didn’t believe it was necessary for every bike in Britain to go so far for a good ride… so I came up with the East Coast 500. Three laid-back days of great roads around interesting places in East Anglia.
When we ran it as a guided tour for Chickenstrips, I added an extra day around one location to sweep into Lincolnshire to ride some of my favourite roads – the ones that not only made up my weekend rides when I lived there but also got used for countless road tests when I was on RiDE and BiKE. I’ve re-ridden almost every mile over the past year and it’s still a cracking ride. Okay, the north Norfolk coast would be busy on the Bank Holiday… so maybe save this one for another point in the heatwave so you can ride it mid-week when it’s quiet. It’s a cracking ride.
PLUS the wild-card: the Belgium three-day tour
If you’re close enough to the Eurotunnel that nipping under the sea is easier than fighting your way past the Dartford crossing, I have a new short tour that heads into Belgium for two nights. There’s a bit of motorway into and out of Calais, but then it’s miles of great country roads through the Ardennes. It’s an ideal long-weekend break, whether you’re a novice European tourist or an old-hand.
