At the moment I’m juggling hospital visits, work, being a responsible pet owner, and all the other things I do. This has lead to a few logistical challenges, but since I was kindly loaned a bike a couple of weeks ago I have found new ways to do everything I need to do and still manage to see new parts of my local environment.<\/p>\n
I’m not a fan of cycling on busy roads, and although I’ve done it a few times recently, it’s very much a means to and end, and not an enjoyable journey. The ones I’ve enjoyed are where I can use parks, cycle paths and canals to get around – and Birmingham is surprisingly good for those kind of routes if you know where to look.<\/p>\n
The journeys I’ve particularly enjoyed (with links to routes) are:<\/p>\n
The park near my house to Good Hope Hospital via Sutton Park<\/a> – I’ve done this one 3 times now, and it doesn’t go anywhere near a main road until Sutton Town centre. One day I will explore the top part of Sutton Park too, but that’s a trip for another day.<\/p>\n An alternate morning commute<\/a> – This takes me to my local train station, but via two parks rather than a busy main road. It’s quite short (I walk most of this with the dog a couple of times a week), but it’s a really pleasant cycle when the weather is nice.<\/p>\n Good Hope Hospital to the park near my house via lots of parks and cycle paths<\/a> – After cycling back from hospital twice on the roads, I vowed never to do it again (especially during rush hour). This route got my home more quickly, despite being longer, and is at least 2\/3 off road. It’s also a really lovely ride through leafy cycle paths and past meandering streams.<\/p>\n Witton Lakes to the City Centre, via the canals<\/a> – I’ve dubbed this one the canal graffiti tour<\/em>, but it’s not quite as bad as it sounds, and it ends up at the Mailbox with only one tiny bit of road cycling on the way. I like graffiti quite a lot, so I suspect I’ll be coming back to this one with a proper camera at some point.<\/p>\n All of this has been really enjoyable, so I guess I’ll be buying a bike (or two?) soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At the moment I’m juggling hospital visits, work, being a responsible pet owner, and all the other things I do. This has lead to a few logistical challenges, but since I was kindly loaned a bike a couple of weeks ago I have found new ways to do everything I need to do and still … Continue reading “Cycling in Birmingham”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2,3,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cycling","category-real-life-updates","category-sustainability","category-travel"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andy.teknostatik.co.uk\/cycling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andy.teknostatik.co.uk\/cycling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andy.teknostatik.co.uk\/cycling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andy.teknostatik.co.uk\/cycling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andy.teknostatik.co.uk\/cycling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/andy.teknostatik.co.uk\/cycling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andy.teknostatik.co.uk\/cycling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andy.teknostatik.co.uk\/cycling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andy.teknostatik.co.uk\/cycling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}