Cycling day 48: Amble to Haswell Plough
The ride today was fairly flat for most of it, but ended with a climb via a path on the route of a former railway. After some initial countryside the route started to pass through urban areas, most notably around the Tyne. I found that the signing of NCR1 seemed to disappear somewhere around Whitley Bay or Tynemouth, so instead I just followed the coast road until I was eventually able to pick up some signs again. It was probably just one sign missing, but that’s all that’s needed to lose the route.
The cycle routes get complex near to the Tyne. There are several of them. There’s NCR1 ultimately heading north / south, NCR72 the Hadrian’s Cycleway, and NCR10 the Reivers Cycle Route (currently being renumbered from Regional Cycle Route 10). There’s also NCR14 on the south side of the Tyne. Something signed as NCR7 (which, I admit, I was surprised to see here — perhaps it’s mis-signed?) and Regional Cycle Route 20 make an appearance as well. Strictly following NCR1 I could have used a ferry to cross the Tyne, but instead I used a portion of NCR72 and NCR14 to cross via the Tyne foot / cycle tunnel (Actually it’s two parallel tunnels, one for pedestrians and the other for cyclists.). Unlike the Greenwich Foot Tunnel which I’ll be using in a few days’ time it seems that cycling is allowed in the Tyne cycle tunnel.
On my way out of the Tyne urban area I met a PCSO out on a beat using a bicycle. We chatted for a bit about my ride and I gave him a card about the trip.
About The Author
Gregory Williams
Add a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Hi, Greg. Glad to see you’ve got your internet connection back. If I recall correctly, the NCN7 route starts in Sunderland, heads west over the Pennines to Penrith, then heads north via Carlisle and Glasgow to Inverness, but from you reading your blog you already know this latter detail!
Best of luck for the final push home.
Paul
That post was made on a painful 9600bps connection via a mobile phone :-(, but I’ve now got WiFi DSL for the rest of the night :-). So the NCR7 signage is correct afterall. I’d somehow thought that NCR7 only started in NW England somewhere. We may already have the NE NCR7 mapping in OSM anyway; I haven’t checked yet as I’ve only just got this DSL connection…
Yes, I’ve just checked, the north east part of NCN7 is on OSM. However, further on part of the section between Carlisle and Penrith is missing: I don’t think you went that way. Oh, well.
I guess I’ll just have to go back and cycle that at some other time. At the rate OSM is progressing though I’m sure that someone will have mapped it in the meantime.