It’s been a while since I’ve shared a London cycle route as truth be told, I’ve not been doing much cycling outside the centre of London. However, a friend of mine recently took me out on this ride and I wanted to share it with you guys – just in case we suddenly get a good day of weather (fingers and toes crossed).
It’s a ride a couple of miles outside the Southern confines of the M25, just 40 minutes by train from the centre of London. The route will mainly appeal to road cyclists, with its quiet country lanes and occasional challenging hills. At 25 and a half miles long, it should take you around two hours to complete, so this is a ride anyone can try.
Its a clockwise, circular route, that starts off in the town of Hurst Green. I’ve marked a number of good pubs in the area, on the Google Map. In particular, the Haxted Mill is worthy of note, as it is a converted 16th century watermill, that now houses a rather posh restaurant with excellent food.
View Hurst Green Kent Cycle Ride in a larger map
If you are on Android, you can open the Google Map directly on your phone. For iPhone users, you can easily email yourself the KML of the route (available on the link) and then open it up in an app such as Cyclemeter.
[button link=”https://www.londoncyclist.co.uk/london-cycle-routes-book/”]More London Cycle Routes[/button]
If anyone is interested a group of us have set up a cycling group based in Faversham ,Kent. We ride distance rather than speed and certainly not a chain gang, though our mechanic can provide training programmes etc. ( Ex-Army triathlete and cycling union!).
We ride normally 30-35 miles every Sunday with the occaisional Wednesday ride. Come along, we know some good cake stops!
Contact me for more details.
Paul,
Hi, Paul, I am Kieran, originally from Nepal(MT Everest). I am new for Cycling in Uk. Saw your post and interested to join yr group.
Well, I live in Greenwich and I presume easy to come there by train.
Hoping for yr reply
regards
Looks like a nice route. Will try it before the Winter sets in.
Great little route that I wouldn’t mind doing at some point, so thanks Andreas. What i like more is the fact I have just learned that i can download KML files and open with Cyclemeter!! Thanks for that and feel free to publish more 🙂
I did this route this last yesterday with a friend. We missed out stop at Hurst Green, so we started the loop at Edenbridge, instead.
Now, I don’t have much experience with cycling trips (I’ve only been commuting to work for 2.5 years), but I thought it was quite a nice one. Most roads had little to no traffic. Some parts were quite scenic. We saw lots of sheep and cows, and we even saw some deer [from afar]! There were some nasty hills, but I enjoyed the climb (Strava calculated 520m elevation gain, overall). My friend did break down on one of the climbs (the nastiest of them), though, and ended up walking the last 100 meters.
We didn’t manage to try the food at any of the pubs. We had our granola bars and drinks from home, so we weren’t hungry at any point. We did stop by the Royal Oak (the one in Crockham Hill) at the end (which would’ve been the beginning, had we not missed our stop at Hurst Green). But they had already closed the kitchen by the time got there.
2 tips:
1- The part between Haxted mill and Hurst Green had some nasty stretches of un-flat roads. Our [road] bikes were shaking and rattling for most of that part. I’d recommend looking into an alternative route.
2- Trains back to London run once every hour. To avoid a lengthy wait at the station, check the train times and try to pace that last parts accordingly.
Oh, also, on that little road to Markbeech Village, we passed by a house/farm that had eggs at their gate for sale. It was a nice surprise (again, it’s my first trip in the countryside, I don’t know how often/rarely I’ll see this kind of thing). My friend bought a box, and found some of the eggs had double-yolks (which means good luck!)… so yeah, don’t miss out on that!