Cycling to Shoreham/out of the city

[katanita]

Has anyone got a nice quiet route for heading out of the city south on a bike? I need to get to Shoreham this weekend but would also like good routes out generally that don't involve horrible junctions or very busy roads.

Not too many hills would also be good (will be heavily laden for the Shoreham trip). Citymapper suggests a very wiggly quiet route I could try but looks a bit tedious, or one that takes the B263/A208 etc and is maybe very busy and unpleasant. So if anyone has any info on that would be very grateful! Thanks in advance.

[johnie]

I would think a good place to start would be joining the Route 21 at Ladywell or catford, then picking up Route 20 for onwards from Crawley.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/21909#map=11/51.1703/0.2314

[zerkalo]

Try cycle.travel to plan your route

https://cycle.travel/

[amac]

I think the best route would be to cycle through St Mary Cray then Cockmannings Lane, Skibbs Lane then Maypole Rd.

En route to St Mary Cray you could use the backroute of Lubbock Rd and Old Hill at Chislehurst, the bridleway (if you have a mountain bike or hybrid, def not for road bikes) through the woods of Petts Wood (very nice), emerge at Marlings Park and then backstreets to St Mary Cray.

[katanita]

Thanks all.

I used cycle.travel to plot a route, and then Citymapper which came up with a very similar one (and easier to navigate using the app). The route I took started on route 21 but then after Catford it wiggled through back streets to Orpington. It was a lot of rather dreary suburbia, and a bit tedious navigating all the back streets (apart from a pleasant stretch through Jubilee Country park). Also the A224 it took me along has no segregated path and is quite fast, not very nice. Such a shame that there is no nice official cycle route in that direction. Eventually made it into the countryside and almost all the way up Well Hill (brutal incline on a loaded bike!) before onto Shoreham.

Unfortunately your post came too late for this trip @amac but will try that next time!

[johnie]

Ah, I think I had the wrong Shoreham, Shoreham-by-Sea near Brighton.

[katanita]

You did, but that's OK, I may try that route too at some point!