The wisdom of Komoot, the line I’d been following on my GPS, had failed me. The only way out of the steep, wooded valley was the way I’d come, up a loose, gravelly drove; a hollow way. So I turned around what has been described as ‘the SUV of e-bikes’, fully laden, and started pushing.

I’m not sure why I can’t just do holidays. Instead my down time apparently needs to comprise a long-winded shlep from one destination to another, often arbitrary one, with whatever points of interest happen to exist along the way. See also exhibit X, exhibit Y and exhibit z.

In this case I’d visited my mum and sister in Somerset, and I had £5.5k’s worth of borrowed e-bike on my hands, which I’ve been reviewing for Cycling Electric. The summer was rapidly coming to an end and I was overdue a holiday – the eternal freelance problem of just keeping going until you’re exhausted.

Where could I go with such a machine and a few days? I pondered, gazing idly at a map. Why, on a three-day adventure across Somerset and Dorset, of course, to, let’s see, Salisbury. I added likely-looking stopping points on the route using Komoot, taking in what seemed like decent points of interest along the way. A viewpoint here, Thomas Hardy’s cottage there. Ooh, the Cerne Giant. The route ended up looking like the edge of a saw, both vertically and horizontally, but a route it was, nonetheless.

If you haven’t listened to Guy Martin on Desert Island discs, I would recommend it… it’s a startling glimpse into the mind of quite an unusual character. One of the most striking things this ex-pro motorcycle racer talked about was his need to calm his inner chimp, by going on hardcore multi-day cycling trips. During these trips he flogs himself on the bike during the day, and sleeps in hedges at night. Without these trips, he says he becomes difficult to live with. While I don’t like suffering or sleeping in hedges, perhaps we all need to be outdoors for a spell, periodically.

Being on an e-bike for me makes such trips possible, even without many cycling miles in my legs this year. Plus it dials down the suffering considerably.

Path heroes along the way

I visited some people I’d interviewed for my rural path campaigners’ toolkit – the kindly folks of Loders Transport Group. They hope to rekindle parts of an old railway line that once connected Westbay and Maiden Newton.

An energetic campaigner, Becky, met me at West Bay to cycle to Bradpole on a traffic-free route, before following roads to the village of Loders, where I stayed with one of the group’s chairs, Sue. Becky showed me the various potential routes through the village and we bumped into one of the plan’s opponents who is worried groups of cyclists riding along the village road will mow people down – as he believes happens in London (it doesn’t).

At the other end of the path, the community in the village of Toller Porcorum is apparently supportive of the path. I met George Sartin and his wife, Sue (pictured), who have been gradually stitching together the eastern end of the route, building stretches of path, and even buying the land to do so. With regular volunteers, they’ve built unique bus shelter-like structures along the way. We met a dog-walker who loves the path. Some people walk just to enjoy the view from one of the shelters, and walk home. We followed these paths to George and Sue’s van, and went for coffee and home made cake in Maiden Newton’s No. 64 Newsagents & Cafe. Excellent local jams. I picked up sandwiches and snacks, and they drove me first to see the chalk giant at Cerne Abbass, and then dropped me at Hardy’s Cottage (I’d overestimated the 800Wh battery life off-road, fully laden, over steep terrain, so was glad of the short cut).

According to the local Ramblers group there are 4,700 footpaths, 1700 bridleways and 37 byways in Dorset, totalling around 2,800 miles of routes. These traverse woodland, field edges and ridgetops, and I frankly couldn’t believe my luck, bumping along them for a couple of days. On the outskirts of Wimborne, the Castleman Trailway was well signposted and well used. There’s currently a consultation on Dorset’s wider Rights of Way Improvement Plan or ROWIP, if you’re interested.

I took the e-bike camping for the night. I can heartily recommend the campsite at Huntick Retreat, near Lytchett Matravers. Do anything you can to avoid the A35 though. By the morning, my 15-year-old tent had let in the first night’s rain in well over a month, and the bent tent poles wouldn’t come unstuck. In a break between showers, I bundled everything in a dry bag and lashed it on the pannier rack.

The opposite of Tiktok Tourism

I was headed for an arbitrary viewpoint on top of a massive hill. This meant climbing the Hardy Trail, via a grassy path. Hardy, a young man in the heyday of early cycle touring, travelled a great deal by bicycle, it turns out. At the top a friendly cyclist greeted me but I shlepped on, concerned about missing my train and a haircut in London.

Around 20 miles from Salisbury the GPS died, because I’d forgotten the charging cable. At around 10 miles to go, the phone died too, so I wedged a battery pack behind my phone on my handlebar mount, and carried on.

I passed two nice ladies sitting atop a hill. After rattling down the grassy field to the bottom, surfing the pedals, I realised my battery pack had fallen off. With 2% charge left on the phone, it would be tricky to reach Salisbury, or access my train tickets without it. So I retraced my steps. On the hilltop the curious retired ladies – sisters – were keen to help and one walked a considerable way looking for the battery, before giving up and offering me directions. There were brambly nooks beside the path into which I couldn’t reasonably follow a battery, and I doubted my chances. Right at the bottom, as all hope seemed lost, I finally found it lying in the grass, and trudged onward – using Komoot’s ‘road riding’ option – I had a full complement of scratches already. In the mad rush for my train, I managed not to see the famed cathedral, or anything really of Salisbury. The only photo I took there was of this bike hub, with a cyclists dismount sign next to it. At least I didn’t contribute to over tourism – I was well and truly off the beaten path.

For my hair dresser’s sake, I freshened up in the train loo and wheeled the whole bike in to the salon – no-one there acted surprised – returning home with clean hair and dirty everything else, and happy.

All this is to say, it’s nice to remember that even when things go wrong, in all likelihood it will work out, one way or another. It puts things in perspective a bit.

*Speaking of perspective, I started writing this description of a bridge washing away before the flash floods in Nepal and am acutely aware of how my micro-adventure pales in comparison to the horror of recent events near Kathmandu.

Frome’s Missing Links is a 20-year-long campaign to complete a three mile stretch of countryside from the end of the traffic-free Collier’s Way to the centre of the small Somerset town.

Currently the two places are connected by hilly roads, but last summer one of the hilliest was removed when nine years’ community effort finally came to fruition as tarmac was laid on another almost mile of path.

12 years ago Richard, who is Frome’s former mayor, joined the campaign. In spring 2025 Laura met Richard Ackroyd on this brand-new stretch of path linking the Colliers Way to Great Elm, to discuss their success and how they overcame landowner issues, worked with Network Rail, fundraised and built community support.

As a longstanding campaigner, Ackroyd has enormous amounts of expertise to share. When the route is built, you will be able to cycle to Bath, traffic-free.

Laura and Richard take a short tour of the path, and enjoy some of its charming features and views. At one point Laura misidentifies a songbird as a Robin, but Richard is too polite to correct her.

fromesmissinglinks.org.uk

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This interview is part of a series of audio interviews, intended to complement the Rural Path Campaigner Toolkit, published in 2026.

This content was originally published on Soundcloud

We start off meeting 79-year-old Linda Brinklow, who talks about the path she and volunteers started clearing in 2023/24, on the west of the island. The group’s hoped-for route follows a former light railway line, which was dismantled in 1950.

After meeting Linda we join volunteers clearing brambles, with strimmers and loppers. At this point there is some strimming noise, which I couldn’t get away from unfortunately.

The group hopes that, from Minster where we visit, the route can proceed into a cemetery and at the edge of a field and potentially a sports ground, to meet one of the island’s busy main roads. There it will need to be a protected route, for the short distance to the town itself. In the other direction, the group is working with local communities, landowners and local businesses to continue the route all the way to the east of the village, at Leysdown, roughly following the route of the old railway. The only way of traversing the island at the moment is via a busy main road. We start our conversation beside part of that busy road.

Years ago islanders were asked for their climate mitigation priorities - and a cycle route was one of them. While the other projects were realised, the cycle route has proved difficult to get going. Various local authorities have apparently promised over decades to deliver a safe route, but the path hasn’t materialised. It was only when the group began clearing brambles on an old section of railway line that the momentum star

ted. Key to this was also the support of a new council officer working on active travel, who helped support the group to revitalise the project.

This interview is part of a series of audio interviews, intended to complement the Rural Path Campaigner Toolkit, published in 2026.

This content was originally published on Soundcloud

Laura Laker talks to community path building legend, John Grimshaw, as part of her Rural Path Campaigners’ toolkit.

John Grimshaw founded Sustrans, now the Walk, Wheel Cycle Trust, and the National Cycle Network 40 years ago this year. He built his first path in 1979 with volunteers and has built a route every year since. He would want me to say he achieved this of course alongside countless other staff and countless partner organisations and local authorities - with whom none of the work would have been possible.

John discusses some of the nuts and bolts around how to build a path, and he offers path campaigners the opportunity to join him on technical visits to paths he has built, to talk through some of the elements you need for a well-designed route.
John says: “I built the first five miles of the Bristol and bath path with volunteers in 1979. I suppose one way or the other I’ve built paths every year of my life since then. And it never gets any easier, assembling paths, but it’s always very exciting. You realise it does transform local communities. There are literally thousands of isolated communities in the country, which need these sorts of paths. If you’re in Denmark I think the law requires that local authorities build safe routes to school so even quite remote settlements end up with an excellent path simply because that’s a requirement and we just don’t have anything like that.”

He also discusses landowner issues, working with contractors and more.

For those interested in arranging a technical visit with John, email greenwaysandcycleroutes@gmail.com

This interview is part of a series of audio interviews, intended to complement the Rural Path Campaigner Toolkit, published in 2026.

This content was originally published on Soundcloud

Caroline Levett has organised ten years of volunteer work camps with her and John Grimshaw’s charitable company, Greenways and Cycleroutes. In that time they have laid paths by hand, lit tunnels, complied with any number of ecological requirements and generally created magic where they go.

What started as a conversation turned into a movement - and now paths in Brean, Somerset; Chepstow, Monmouthshire; Waddesdon, Bucks; and Shepton Mallet, Somerset are used for hundreds of thousands of trips.

In this inspiring conversation Caroline discusses the various adventures she and volunteers have enjoyed along the way, and the paths they have built.

This interview is part of a series of audio interviews, intended to complement the Rural Path Campaigner Toolkit, published in 2026.

This content was originally published on Soundcloud

National Highways considered closing more than 20 more roadside walking and cycling paths in the last five years because the roads breached legal air quality limits, Potholes and Pavements has learned.

Two walking and cycling paths alongside heavily polluted roads were closed in the last 18 months, in order for National Highways to meet its legal air quality obligations. AI-assisted analysis of the government-owned trunk road body’s air quality reports, dating back to 2018, highlighted closures of two dozen other paths within 15 meters of heavily polluted roads were explored over the last decade. Closures of traffic lanes were not considered.

According to National Highways’ latest air quality analysis, 19 of its road links still exceed annual legal limits, down from 26 in 2024. During two earlier phases of air quality assessments, covering measured and projected emissions between 2018 and 2026, National Highways considered various path closures, alongside other measures.

In around 2019 it explored five path closures, some through parks adjacent to its roads, and two cycle routes crossing its roads via bridges - one of which was on the National Cycle Network. These were found, in its annual evaluation report for 2022, published in January 2024, to be compliant. During the following phase, 22 walking and/or cycling routes were identified within 15m of heavily polluted roads. In 18 of those cases, closures were dismissed because there were no alternative routes.

By 2024 three paths were still found to be non-compliant. One path within 15m of the M56 in Manchester was recommended for a feasibility study for closure, and ‘further work’ was proposed for another on the M1 in Sheffield, and the M602 in Salford, before being dismissed. The speed limit on the M1 and M602 was reduced to 60mph in 2020 and 2021, respectively, to reduce air pollution. Several footpaths considered for closure were within retail parks, which are often located beside busy trunk roads.

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When Steve Cromwell tried to use a shared use path beside the A3 in Guildford in Surrey in July, he was surprised to find ‘hostile paving’ had been installed, bumpy paving blocks, along with new signs prohibiting cycling and walking, and…

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There’s no getting away from it: walking and cycling investment in England, indeed in the UK has been very urban. That’s where the big user numbers can be had, and big numbers help councils make the case to get the funding. As Chris Boardman has put it a couple of times now, if you want to deliver active travel equitably, I.e., across urban and rural, y…

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It was a warm-to-hot morning in London on Sunday, when I cycled to Southwark to pick up a large speaker fitted to a bike trailer, and tow it around central London. The point was to offer my …

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From the path itself, however, you notice little beyond the two roaring lanes…

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We are one of the most centralised large democracies in the world, with local authorities holding less financial and decision making clout than our peers in other nations. So letting local authorities choose what they spend their…

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Part of cycling’s – and, more recently, walking’s – problem is that it’s too small. Too cheap. It gets overlooked where the big, shiny junction upgrade gets the funding.

England’s walk…

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England will have a national cycling and walking network mapped by 2030, with a £4.5bn five-year funding pledge, and targets to increase active travel and reduce road injuries and deaths, as part of a new ten-year strategy laid out today.

The government’s overdue third Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS3) itself is, it seems, officially published on Monday. Unlike last year’s consultation, which threatened a vague and target-less strategy, CWIS3 seeks to grow active travel to 55% of all trips by 2035, cut fatal and serious collisions by 65%, and 70% for children, and increase active school journeys to 60%.

However, concerns have been raised over how much of the £4.5bn will actually be spent on active travel, while campaigning veteran, Roger Geffen, has questioned how national targets for proportions of trips cycled might be distributed, and measured, locally - and how campaigners might respond in their areas if targets do differ between urban and rural areas, for example.

In an open letter last year, coordinated by Potholes and Pavements, Adam Tranter and then CEO of the Walk, Wheel Cycle Trust, Xavier Brice, more than 50 organisations called for a mapped national network, targets and multi-year funding for active travel in CWIS3. While almost all of the letter’s asks are included in the final strategy, there isn’t yet a target for increasing network mileage, once the national network is established - or indeed for increasing mileage at all, at this stage. There is instead a pledge for 5,000 new walking, wheeling and cycling routes.

England’s Walking and Cycling Commissioner, Chris Boardman, told P&P all of England’s Metro Mayors back delivery of the network, following a supportive pledge last year. While rural areas will be included, cities will be at the forefront of delivery.

Boardman sees it as a “truly innovative strategy”, which “properly embraces devolution”.

“I don’t think anybody else has crossed the political divide like we have,” he says, adding “it’s a record commitment in terms of funds.”

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Well that was exciting. In the smattering of TV and radio interviews I’ve done over the years, my appearance on Julia Hartley-Brewer’s (JBH) Talk show this week was one for the books. Her cries of ‘turn her mic off’ as she flapped her arms like an enraged pink seagull will, I imagine, stay with me for some time.

Whe…

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After two days riding the Somerset Circle clockwise from Bath, we enter Bristol via the Pill Path. A gradually morphing cast of around 20 of us are celebrating completion of the 88-mile route, finally navigable (though not all traffic-free) thanks to the efforts of Gavin Mayall and the Windsor Hill Tunnel group at Ham Wood Viaduct completing a mile-and-a-bit long stretch over the past six or so years.

Back to the river. I’m not sure what I expected of the Pill Path - something slightly pedestrian beside a modest stretch of riverbank, maybe.

In fact, at low tide the Avon’s vast, muscular mud banks create great shining folds of earth and silt. Everything is dwarfed by it: houses, bridges, people.

Oh - and we all wore green tabards for the duration, like a fun bicycle-based cult. At this point John Grimshaw, one of the National Cycle Network’s founders, pedals behind me, as we bring up the rear of the group. I drop back to chat with him on this final stretch before catching my train home. As hoped, he begins recounting tales of building this very path, with impoverished out-of-work youngsters employed for no money through the 1980s’ Youth Opportunities Programme. John points out the bridge under which they’d cooked potatoes for the workers, some of whom apparently couldn’t afford breakfast. This story still shocks me, but according to Which? research, one in ten families are once again skipping meals, due to the spiralling cost of living.

But back to the river. Before the Avon gorge closes in above our heads the path perches on a raised bank between the water channel and wild, open grassland. This man-made bank puts it above the high tide mark, bar once or twice a year during tidal surges. As it happens, the week they finished building said bank, in the early 1980s, such a surge washed all of the volunteers’ hard work away, overnight. They had to come back and repeat the job, and now it remains, the soil compacted enough and knitted together with grasses to withstand such deluges.

Shipping news

Some of our group wish the tide is in, but I’m a fan of the open mud channel. There’s something heroic about the scale of it - it’s like seeing the inner workings of some great machinery. John mentions bollards planted alongside the path, for mariners of yore, caught out as the tide started turning.

‘Imagine a ship, stuck in the mud, with the tide coming out, and someone has to climb out and get the ship tied down before it tips over, with 200 people on board and a mist rolling in’.

‘Those bollards must be concreted in, down to the core of the earth’, I reply, ‘to hold such a ship upright’.

‘That’s right - all the way to New Zealand’, he agrees.

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Rural communities in the UK have resorted to delivering their own traffic-free paths as funding and political will have failed to materialise - and my new toolkit hopes to empower more of them to create greenways in their areas.

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