Wednesday 8 August 2012

Seaside Cycling

The coast may not be up in the hills, but Southport is the start of the Trans Pennine Trail so I guess it counts as Pennine Peddling  after all.


 



The Sefton Coast is my favourite local coastal area to go to & it is a great place to go riding and walking. Sure it's flat, but riding on the beach for a few miles feels quite like riding up hill pushing against all that sand... it's no wonder whenever I go, I never see anybody else with their bike on the beach.  And we dont recommend trying to ride over the dunes at all.... S had a very slow soft landing trying :-)





We set off from Southport on the cycle route then a fun  few miles on the beach down to Formby. There are markers at the side of the dunes showing where the paths are behind them. The paths are lovely and snake through pine trees. Plenty of wildlife - if you're very lucky you may spot a red squirrel, otherwise plenty of butterflies. 




After some fun swooping over the roots of trees, the cycle path follows the railway back to Ainsdale, this is to become Sustrans Route 801.



A fun, easy going 19 miles in the sunshine. Ideal after the previous day's 29 miles of thigh burning bridleways!!

2 comments:

  1. Great blog, super pics :)

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  2. I absolutely love the Trans Pennine Trail, its such an interesting cross section of all that the North has to offer. The only thing missing is some information about the history and culture of the places one passes through which is what I decided to research and write about. You might be interested to have a look - http://cyclingthetranspenninetrail.seasonjunkie.com.

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