🚲 The nice way to cycle from Wanstead to Woodford

You can cycle from Wanstead in north east London to nearby Woodford, entirely on quiet streets and protected cycle lanes.

The route is 5.6km long (3.5 miles) and makes use of protected cycle lanes along Woodford New Road, a cycle path along Whipps Cross Road, as well as quiet streets near George Green.

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You can see a digital map of the route and download a GPS/GPX file to use on whatever device or app you want here:

https://www.komoot.com/tour/1587048418?share_token=auOvy9r53FO4Jm8qV777vhL01SeQ8Ivko1UJy4oGgcqdJNFhTa&ref=wtd

And you can find a viewer-created and maintained map of all the London Cycle Routes videos here:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1h9Hxm57fPvZmcuSXajM_Wu0G0s6f_bs&ll=51.505213496092054%2C-0.1285238120117249&z=12

I also highly recommend the Safe Cycle London map for route planning, which is compiled by @SafeCycleLDN on twitter:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1XlpvN9R-Wg7qZHyezO8y-eVlftr4e0WX&hl=en&ll=51.516975804561284%2C-0.21828576419061996&z=11

hello and welcome back to London cycle routes today I’ll be showing you how to cycle from onstead in Northeast London to Woodford this ride takes about 20 minutes and you can do the whole thing on quiet streets and protected cycle Lanes by public transport the same Journey takes more like half an hour so you can even save a bit of time by getting on your bike if you find this video useful or you just enjoy watching then please don’t forget to hit the Subscribe button on the channel as I try to post new videos just like it every week I’d also like to say a massive thank you to everybody who supports the channel on patreon if you’re feeling generous and you’d like to contribute too then you can find a link in the description below the video all right let’s get going so we’re starting on the Cor of George green with one stad tube station in the background and we’re going to use this little cycle path to get through to dracott Road dracott road is a cerac so it doesn’t have any traffic on it and you should be able to ride down here perfectly comfortably our route today is a little bit indirect as you might have seen from the map at the beginning you could just cycle dead North up through onstead and end up in South Woodford and then Woodford the reason that we’re going this slightly convoluted way is is to avoid the busier roads stick to the back streets and also benefit from a few protected cycle Lanes which we’ll be seeing later while our way is a little bit indirect it is still quicker than many of the Alternatives as we also saw at the beginning and crucially it’s a really nice ride on some pretty quiet streets and decent cycle paths this route relies on some brilliant brand new infrastructure that’s been put in in the last few years is but it also links up to some older stuff that has been around for a while but links very nicely to the new stuff this is one example of it you can see alongside the a12 here there is a cycle path the surface is not fantastic and it clearly hasn’t been retar Max since it was built whenever that was but it’s completely separated from traffic separated from pedestrians and you’d feel completely happy riding along here with kids one thing I would say is that it does need a clean but underneath all that foliage if it were cleared away is actually quite a good cycle path this also connects to an old piece of infrastructure which is the cycle path under the Green Man interchange if you couldn’t tell from that brick work this Junction was last rebuilt in the 1990s despite overall being a very car Centric scheme that was part of a big road building program at the time time the designers of this Junction did take into account cycle access we’re actually in the middle of a massive roundabout here in a dip that’s only accessible from those underpasses or Bridges like this one which actually runs over the central line of the London Underground a lot of heavy engineering and money went into providing for Cycles there way more I think than would be available for a scheme that was actually about cycling ironically it really just shows the huge budgets that big road schemes like that got back in the 1980s and ’90s compared to the amount of money that we’re spending on cycle infrastructure now one thing I would point out is though that at the time that that roundabout interchange was built with its underpasses it would have been effectively marooned as part of a cycle Network it wouldn’t have connected up to anything it’s only recently that it started to connect up to this cycle path which was put in by wal and Forest Council relatively recently this is a shared path which isn’t always a good idea but I actually think this one is pretty decent for a few reasons we can go through my shared path checklist the first is that it does have very low footfall on it except around this little cabin here where you can buy food and drinks the second is it has almost no side roads except for that car park that we just went past and the third is that it’s not just a pavement it is actually separated from the road by a grass ver Verge with a relatively wide path for you to use the surface of the path is also pretty nice and I also like the Sandy buff color which looks nice but also provides a visual clue to pedestrians that they’re not just on a pavement they are on a path and that there could be people cying down it as well another design feature I like are the regular and prominent shared space signs which help avoid disputes between people who may not realize it’s a Shar path which does sometimes happen on other routes of course it is our responsibility when we’re riding a bike on a shared path like this to watch out for pedestrians so don’t rry too quickly and make sure you give everybody plenty of space when you pass them of course separated cycle lanes are better than shared paths pretty much always but given the space constraints there I think that’s a pretty good solution to getting a safe piece of cycle infrastructure down whips Crossroad if you were looking for some really high quality cycle infrastructure then look no further than here at the whips Cross Junction this used to be an incredibly inhospitable Junction for cycling but it’s been completely rebuilt by W and Forest Council and they’ve done a fantastic job separate Crossings for pedestrians and Cycles really wide paths for cycling separate from the pavement Blended Junctions with the side roads like the one we just went over and great connections to surrounding infrastructure heading off in all directions the only thing that confuses me a little bit is this Junction here which is signalized in this direction but strangely not in the other direction I couldn’t quite work out what to do when taking this route southbound but yeah the rebuild of that Junction and the Fantastic cycle path up Woodford new road that we’re on now is really really good stuff one place you do need to be careful though is here where front Gardens have been converted to parking spaces as those cars could pull out at any second keep an eye on the pavement park car here and you’ll see that that silver Mercedes which was completely invisible to the last second was actually pulling out from behind it if I’d been a second later there or that driver had been a little bit less attentive that could have been really nasty and it’s a really good example of why it’s illegal to park on the pavement in greater London and why it is so dangerous now the UK is absolutely full of fast moving narrow a roads like this one the a104 that we’re on now if you’ve ever traveled around this country particularly outside London you’ll recognize this scene exactly there are so many roads that look like this the difference is that this one has got an amazing protected cycle Track Running next to it along the whole way and that’s what I really like about this street because it really shows the potential for roads like this across the whole country if you go back on Google Street View to 2018 you can see that this was partly fitted in by narrowing the general traffic Lanes which is a great way to do it in my opinion now unfortunately this good track is coming to an end and we need to cross the road here this is the worst point in the whole route and you really just need to wait for a gap in the traffic and then cycle over to the shared pavement on the other side I hope that wal and Forest has got plans to redo this Junction cuz it really isn’t ideal for now it is something that you can get through if you know the right way to do it which you will because you’ll now have watched this video first you want to continue along the shared pavement until you’re past the traffic lights and for bus fans I just like to point out that there are two super Loop 2 buses in shot just here keep going until the pavement runs out and then dive into this path here which leads to an underpass this is a pretty similar setup to the one that we went through at the Green Man interchange just not quite as well connected up and not quite as nice either I mean I do like trees in Woodland but in this case I think it makes it feel a little bit more isolated although there is Street lighting there so if you’re doing it at night it should be reasonably well lit you then do more or less the same thing again there are basically two Loops connected by that bridge which we just went on and you have to once again go through the underpass and loop around which will lead you back onto Woodford new road again there are street lights here but it is a bit out of the way so do take that into account when you plan your route at the top of the ramp and back on the main road the excellent protected cycle Lanes begin again this time in a with flow format so in this direction you’re on this side of the road and in the other direction you’re on the other side this does mean that if you’re doing the route in the opposite direction you’ll need to take a slightly different one through the underpass as you’ll approach it from a different side it is fairly intuitive though as the layout is symmetrical now you could use this parallel zebra Crossing to turn into chelsford road with priority but in this video I’ve decided I want to go into Derby Road unfortunately there is no Crossing into Derby Road so I waited for a gap in the traffic and then cycled over you can use the protected cycle track on the other side of the road to double back slightly and get to the filter one benefit of using Derby Road is that it is closed at this end so it’s very quiet as there’s no through traffic you might run into some cars at the Eastern end though as there is the entrance to a large car park which attracts motorists and generates traffic so the far end down here could be a little bit busier when you come down here although as you can see it’s not a problem for us today Derby Road takes us right down onto the parade of shops on high road Woodford green I’m going to Dismount from my bike here and just walk along the pavement to show you past the Tesco Express and where all the shops are this is very much the edge of London and some people here do seem to think that they are in Essex one of signs there does actually say WS which stands for West Essex Property Services um we are very near West Essex but I think we are still just about in London for now thank you so much for watching that guys do remember that you can download a digital map of the root and use it on whatever app or device you want in a link in the description below the video thanks again to everyone who supports us on the patreon you can contribute there as well if you like there’s a link in the description below the video and do let me know in the comments what you think of the video I’m always interested in feedback suggestions or even complaints although please do be nice when you make them do leave a like on YouTube to help other people find the video and if you haven’t yet hit subscribe then now is the time to do so I will see you all again next time and in the comments below goodbye