How to cycle from Northfield to Kings Norton – Birmingham Cycle Routes

Welcome to Bike Routes of Brum! A channel dedicated to showing safe cycle routes around Birmingham and the West Midlands – inspired by @Londoncycleroutes

In this video we will be cycling from Northfield Town Centre to York Road on Kings Heath and it should take about half an hour to ride. Just be warned – this is a very hilly route unfortunately!

The route I’ve followed can be found as a .GPX file here:

https://www.komoot.com/tour/1558117858

hi you’re watching bike routs of Brum a channel dedicated to finding safe cycle routes across burum in this video we’ll be cycling from Northfield Town Center to Kings Heath in this route we’ll be using quiet streets and venturing into the Kings Heath low traffic neighborhood and it should take about half an hour to cycle there’s multiple ways that you can do this route including using the ray Valley route which I’ve already done a video on recently and uh this is just one of the ways so if anyone has any suggestions for other methods then feel free to write them down below I’ll put a link to this route uh into the description below so you can download the GPX file for yourself so we are starting in Northfield town center and we’re going to drop down onto Church Road and go past the shopping center now this road is quite wide but it is meant to be a 20 mph um whether people adhere to that or not I don’t really know but we’re not going to stay on it very long if you do feel a bit uneasy on it you could always take a left just here and it will take you into Victoria common but we’re going to carry on and go up this way instead because sometimes the Common’s actually closed at night um and this is a way that seems to be accessed to any time it does feel like you just cycle in front of somebody’s front garden um but apparently you can actually cycle there so uh we dropped down onto Heath Road South and we’re going to follow this now along the bottom of the common there is a way that you can cut through the park and if you decided to go that way you’d basically drop out a little bit ahead of uh where we’re coming to now there is is actually a way to do this um cycling all the way through lots of different Parks but the way I’ve chosen to go is taking a right onto denmore Avenue again if you wanted to you could go up one of these little Service Roads if you wanted to avoid being on the main bit but I can’t imagine this bit being particularly busy we’re going to take a left onto inage Road and follow this round now my main aim for this route is basically to avoid cycling along the b41 2 one also known as bumbrey Road and then Middleton Hall Road now these roads are pretty wide and basically provide the main link between Bristol Road and persal Road and as such they can get pretty busy and they’re not always the most Pleasant to cycle along now the Bunbury Road section is actually pretty wide um but I have seen some idiots hustling along there so I thought it might be best to just weave our way through these back streets although we will have to drop onto bumbrey road for about 200 m um now following my original plan was to follow Heath Road all the way until Maryvale Road and then can weave that way but it cuts out a whole Lane which is really annoying and you have to do a massive detour or walk your bike through a hedge basically which isn’t very accessible bike friendly so I thought I’d avoid that I think there’s definitely space along bumbery road to actually put some sort of protected bike infrastructure uh and this would link up with the eventual a38 cycle route and cutteridge but yeah that’s that’s for another day as such we now drop onto bumbury road which you can see it is there is some space there I mean there are some buses that go along here but I’m sure you could fit something along here it does then narrow um after this bit but we’re going to take a left onto Northfield Road and follow this round now if I was designing this cycle route along here I’d actually consider directing it along Northfield Road as Middleton Hall Road does actually get a little bit thinner and this is quite quite a nice one to ride along it also takes us past Kings Norton boy school which will go past and this would provide you know a good active travel alternative for people to use to get to school because I can imagine especially along this bit where it does get a bit tighter I can imagine this gets absolutely chaotic around school drop off time so you know providing a safer route for kids to get to school could help alleviate that at least there is some kind of traffic calming stuff on this road which makes cycling along here a bit nicer and the fact that this stretch is actually a 20 mph Zone um probably helps as well but it now turns into a 30 once you get past the school which isn’t great but we’re not on here for too long we go over this roundabout and you can see buses go along here as well um but overall it’s not too bad a road to cycle along um nobody can go that fast but we’re going to take a left now onto Station Road and if you’d gone right there you would have basically got to um the back end of Northfield station which I did look as a route to kind of joining onto the ray Valley route but you’ve got to lift your bike over the uh The Pedestrian foot path so it’s not really ideal for us on bikes we get to the end of the road and we’re going onto Franklin Road now this bit of Franklin Road is I don’t know if what scheme it was or anything but it does seem to be a little bit of an eln there’s something at the end of the road um as you can just see these Planters which stop people using it as a cut through which is quite nice uh makes it a lot nicer to cycle along but we’re going to go straight over and carry on along Franklin Road and come up to cutteridge park now one thing that I’ve learned along this route and it will become more apparent later is how hilly bur is um I thought cdge Park was actually going to be worse cuz in my head it’s just one giant Hill and this bit of Franklin Road in my head again I thought oh God I’m going to have to cycle up here and you can see that it is on a little bit of Hill here but there’s a dip down to it which is I actually didn’t think it was too bad when a cycle along here I think you get a bit of momentum um that will change later when you get to the other side of sturley because what I’ve realized is that stirchley is basically two giant Hills and no matter which way you go you have to go up a massive Hill um you can just see the cab Factory there Factory there in the distance and we’re going to take a right onto merryvale Road and if you did want to go to to cab world take a left there but we’re going to carry on straight over and come to bourneville train station now we go over the bridge here uh with marville Road there’s some lights just kind of filter traffic out now you can either go to the end of merval road but it’s not always the nicest to turn onto onto persal road so what I thought we could do is take a left onto leeh House Road and go to the end of this and then drop on to bourneville Lane what I really wanted to do was show off a little bit of the new stuff that’s opened up in stirchley recently um and so we take a right here onto bourneville Lane and we come to this little bit of sturch Le where it’s like one giant roundabout almost uh but rather than going left where the traffic goes we’ll hop up onto this pavement past the world shortest cyc route and over this tucon Crossing onto this newly developed bit I know it’s had a bit of flat cuz it’s not the best to sit in you’re just kind of sitting in the middle of the road but I know it’s a lot nicer than what was there before which was basically just an abandoned bit of land um but we’re going to now drop onto hazelwell Lane a bit on the left there not the nicest but you can finally get through this little stretch now um this bit of Road I’m not sure what why they haven’t finished it there must be somebody arguing over who owned owns what bit of road but now they’ve put a modal filter on there to stop cars going through but pedestrians and bikes can get through and it’s a nice way to get into hazelwell park now basically I think one of the big problems we have getting to um Kings Heath is Kings Heath is on a massive Hill as well um so no matter which way you go you’re going to have to go up a huge hill now whether that’s Ford House Lane that’s one option but it’s quite busy Cartland road is also really busy so I thought this way we can use hazelwell forra which is just as steep as the other two but because it’s kind of a dead end you don’t get that much traffic along here um brace yourselves CU this is this hill sucks there’s no way of really going around that at all at some point you have to go up a massive Hill and this to me seemed like the most sensible way to go now one good thing about this is if you look to your left through the allotment there there’s quite a few few um gaps in the Hedge and you do get a really nice view over burum so that’s one kind of good good thing about this and if you look behind you as you’re cycling up not that I advise doing that if you’re actually pedaling if you get to the top of the hill you get a really really good view of the cabri factory as well from here so there are little bonuses to this bit but I don’t know if you’ve got an ebike use that if you haven’t unlucky I think when I was actually going up this uh I think I had my son on the the back so it just made it even worse but we get to the top of the hill and you could go left along pineapple Road and that’s where the new pineapple Road station will be and that would take you on to Cartland Road we’re going to go right and we’re going to go onto this little bit of um vicarage Road here but rather than following vicarage road all the way up to Kings Heath because it can get quite busy I thought we could go right onto milbrook Road here and basically we’re going to cut through now I don’t know if you actually can cycle along this bit but there’s a nice little bit of pavement you can just jump up onto and go into King’s close here um whether you can or not I don’t know but basically we’re doing this route to kind of avoid going along um vicarage road again so we turn right there onto King’s Road and then we’re going to take a left onto this road here now as you can see we’re going downhill there so you know that you’re going to have to go uphill at some point pass a little kid bombing it down the hill on his scooter on his own uh and up Parton’s Road this is actually steeper than it looks and it wasn’t a particularly fun cycling experience but it’s more fun than cycling along vicarage road which can be really busy and quite trafficky so this was a way way to kind of skirt around that and unfortunately it does involve another Hill but I can’t imagine this road gets particularly busy and it’s quite wide so it seems like a safer route to go now when we get to the top we’re then going to take a left and we’re going to go on to Grove Road which if you followed this to the end you’d get to the uh the Red Lion but we’re going to take a right on on to Ury Road and basically try and navigate our way through the start of the king’s Heath ltn um again this road isn’t too bad to cycle along quite wide quite forgiving um I can’t imagine that it gets too busy either because it’s kind of a road that links up two of the main ones but we’re going to go to Hazel Hurst Road uh which is quite yeah not a bad one to cycle along and we what you can see there is some planters in the distance and this is the start of the Kings he uh King Heath ltn section um I can’t remember when these actually popped up it was probably 2021 maybe but it has made this area a lot easier to cycle around now but we’re not on Hazelhurst Road for too long because we get to the end and we take a left onto abots road now we’re just coming up to the junction with vicarage Road um and the edge of Kings Heath park there but we’re going to go right onto vicarage Road not for too long though now despite what loads of anti-tm people say it’s not that busy along there it’s it’s a right cycle we go left then and we enter the king’s Heath L um we’re going to take a right onto Silver street now if you were looking to go to the little or something like that you’d carry on um now the way we’re actually going to go onto York Road which is kind of our end destination is actually the way you can drive into the Lan so you might not even notice along this video that that’s what we’re cycling along um but so it does look like there’s a bit more traffic than there normally is but I think I don’t I don’t live in King Heath so I can’t really comment on it but it’s made it a lot nicer to cycle along and what they’ve done with this bit despite the fact that these bards are constantly going missing I mean you can see that one somebody’s tried to run it over which is a bit of a shame but it’s it’s had a massive effect on this bit and made this road really nice and it’s where we’re going to end our video thanks again for watching the video I hope that you found it useful if you have any other ideas for alternate routs or want to mention anything that I’ve forgotten please feel free to comment below I try to upload these videos as as much as I can so don’t forget to subscribe to the channel so you don’t miss any Roots thanks again for watching