London Cycling Backroutes
1 Camden to the British Library and beyond
This is from my friend Eliane Glaser: "Starting in Royal College Road or College Place, you can cycle through Somerstown, which is almost entirely barred to cars, or if they are allowed, for some reason they avoid it. You may need a map the first time since the sign-posting is hit and miss, but you pop out just by the British Library, which is your gateway to central London. There's a special traffic light for you, which is a symbol of a bike. (There's one of these at the end of Wellington Street on the way to Waterloo bridge too. They are funky.)
2 Camden to the west
Take Gloucester Crescent and you will hit the Outer Circle of Regent's Park, which is the only bit you can cycle without getting harassed by a parkie. This is like a hub of the western entry point to central London.
3 The Greenway
Jack Thurston, who does a bike show on Resonance FM, recommends the Greenway, which runs along the northern outfall sewer pipe, from Victoria Park out to Beckton Alp and Barking Creek. The whole sewage network is a cyclist's playground: "There's a map of all the sewage outflow pipes. When they had the great stinks in London, they built these sewage pipes. Because shit has to flow downhill, they make terrific cycle routes. Some of them already have thoroughfares along them, like the one from Notting Hill to Marble Arch."
4 Oxford Street
Matt Seaton, the writer of G2's weekly cycling column, says: "Take any route at all to avoid this. You either get stuck in a canyon of double-decker buses or you run over a tourist." If you're going north to south, he says, stick to Wigmore Street for as long as you can, dropping down Orchard Street at Portman Square, feeding you into North Audley Street, which will in turn lead you round Grosvenor Square and pop you out in Park Lane by the cute Animals at War memorial ("They had no choice") and into Hyde Park.
5 Hyde Park
The park's broadwalk is a good way to avoid the fiendishly fast Park Lane, though Seaton says that at weekends the soap boxers get in the way. I suggested he set up a soap box to warn of the dangers of getting in the way of a cyclist on a cycle path.
6 South to east
On any journey to Tower bridge or farther east, from the south-west or south, you are actually better off dropping south and crossing Old Kent Road closer to Peckham, rather than tootling around all the monster roundabouts of Elephant and the Bricklayers. Even if you're coming from Clapham or Stockwell, get to the Walworth Road however you like, take Albany Road and duck straight over the A2, behind Tesco's, take a right up to Bermondsey, past that underwear bar with the blacked-out windows (the Fort), right again into Tower Bridge Road and there you are. Incredibly direct and quiet.
7 Woolwich ferry
Thurston reminds us: Woolwich ferry is free. And Greenwich foot tunnel is nice.
8 Southwark bridge
Easily the quietest and safest, given the choice between that, Waterloo and Blackfriars
9 The South Bank
Black Prince Road pops you out on the South Bank if you want to get away from the high-speed Kennington arterial roads. Watch out for dozy tourists.
10 Dulwich
If you want to do interval training, Dulwich Village into College Road into Fountain Road (this is really all one long road) is traffic-free in parts, goes through some pretty bits of park and, crucially, only has one traffic light after Dulwich Village, so you can have 10 minutes' unbroken uphill cycling.
... and five places where you'll need a strong lock:
1. Outside the White Cube, Hoxton Square
2. Liverpool Road, Islington, outside Sainsbury's
3. Kellett Road in Brixton
4. Brewer Street in Soho
5. Paddington station (in the bike-parking area)