Secret cycle routes of Norwich #2 – Grove Road to County Hall

A pleasant and direct route to County Hall when approaching from the south, west and north of the city via mostly quiet streets and level ground.

County Hall is the seat of local government for the whole of Norfolk and it’s located in the Southeast corner of Norwich it’s one of those 1960s buildings which was designed to be accessed by car with very little thought given to how anybody would cycle there but of course a lot of people work there and a lot of people live in the city so a lot of people can cycle the County Hall and this is probably the quickest way to get there if you’re coming from the North or the south of the city the route mostly follows quiet back streets although it does involve crossing a few fairly busy roads they’re not too difficult and perhaps the most important consideration for cycling it’s nearly all on the flat the final part of the route goes across what used to be the old cricket ground and enters into County Hall by the back door arriving through the car park so we start at the ipswitch road and New Market Road Junction and following the orange pedal way we cross over into Grove Road and we get a really nice but very short bit of segregated cycleway Grove Road is a two-way street at this point but traffic can’t turn left from the city Direction so that makes it actually quite a a low traffic Route the reason to start the ride at the new market ni Switch Road Junction is because it’s what we might call a node it’s one of those places where you will go through no matter where you come from so you can arrive there from ipswitch Road New Market Road or by using the orange pedal way from anank and llam Roads and eventually we get to the point where Grove Road turns to the left which we follow and that takes us to a mini roundabout now if you’re coming from the north of the city through the city center you’ll be following the orange pedal way in the other direction and that will also bring you to the mini roundabout this is where we leave the orange pedal way and turn into southwell road again not generally a busy road but perhaps slightly more traffic than you get in other parts of this route it is a 20 limit Zone as is all of this route so nothing moves too quickly down here and there is traffic calming in the for of speed bumps ahead of us is the bridge over the Lakeland way the Old Railway line now if you’re diligently following the pedal way map you will see it takes you along lakel way and then you turn left onto the purple pedal way and that takes you to County Hall yes that’s quite a nice route the latum way is a very nice place to ride but it’s much longer than this way and perhaps more importantly it’s not flat it’s worth mentioning that this is a bus route uh which means you meet buses on it occasionally and you do have to pay a little bit of attention when you go over the Railway Bridge back there because it’s a bit narrower than the rest of the rout so if you see a bus coming the other way don’t argue with it and it’s probably because there’s buses along here we have these cushion style traffic caling features the problem with these is cars like to straddled them instead of driving over the bump which means they can cause a bit of a pinch point if you happen to be cycling through the Gap as well so we event get to the end of southwall Road and we reach the first of the roads we have to cross which is Hall Road but we don’t stay on it for very long and we go left into Hospital Lane Hospital Lane is a really nice little road on the left is the Norwich dinos scho nicely set back from the road in its own grounds there’s lots of trees and everything and on the right is the lakam recreation grounds but quite what those large grass covered Mounds are I have no idea the end result is to give this little road quite a nice atmosphere and more to the point very little traffic and once we get to the end of Hospital Lane we come to the second road that we have to cross this is City Road we take an immediate left into Smithfield Road which is a dead end so again really low traffic as we go past the side of the lakenham primary school and eventually we get to the feature which has made this route really what it is it’s a short section of SLE route that makes this CAC into a through route for Cycles we had one look over Road at the start of the video there’s another one to come shortly yes this used to be the old cricet ground and that’s why there’s a statue of a cricketer on the right after not too long the road Road eventually runs out and we take another little bit of cycle track which takes us into the County Hall car park and as we ride through the car park we go past the County Hall Annex on the left now you notice how flat all this has been we haven’t had a single h on the whole Road that’s about to change as we come into the County Hall grounds proper um we take a steep downhill now which will take us towards the car park but we don’t go quite that far we turn right onto a short section of cycle track which is actually the purple pedal way which takes us to the main cycle parking area and that is how you get to County Hall one of norwich’s secret cycle routes for