This guide, like all other Lonely Planet guides, contains the essentials you need to know about Britain before travelling, as well as essential facts for cyclists, including many specialist cycling organisations and contacts. It is good also to see sections dealing with cycling specific health and safety issues, as well as a basic but thorough, and easy to understand, guide to bicycle selection and maintenance.

The bulk of the guide is dedicated to the multitude of routes that can be traversed in Britain's regions. It should be pointed out that these routes are mainly aimed at those seeking to do touring cycling and is mainly based on road and light trails. Those in search of more strenuous off-road biking might be disappointed, although advice on off-road cycling and mountain biking is given throughout the book and some off-road routes are included.

The maps and directions for the routes are clear, and advice is given as to which OS maps correspond to the routes. There is also information on places to stay, places to eat, natural history (always a bonus when you are spending too much time in the landscape), planning, and importantly, advice on how to get to and from the ride.

For the serious cyclist this will make a good addition to the library, a quick reference for the various rides, routes and accommodations available in an area. For the less experienced, perhaps holiday cyclist, this guide will be a essential packing for the pannier, providing, as it does, everything you should know before embarking on a ride. --Iain Robinson

It has many dud routes, and the routes in London (which I know to cycle very well) were downright dangerous in places, even for expereinced cyclists, taking you onto traffic clogged and busy roads where much better roads run parallel! They missed a lot of tricks here, and clearly don't have enough research behind this book to justify it's existence with the Lonely Planet branding. It seems like they've done most of this book behind a desk using sustrans or 'council recommended' routes, which of course are often not the best ones. Buy a book by someone who's actually got out on a bike and ridden the routes thenselves.

In it's favour, this book is better for road and sustrans type routes than the appaling sustrans UK-wide book. However, that's not difficult. I recommend getting the excellent sustrans local guides for your local area any areas you plan to visit for road cycling. Maybe this book does have a place in providing the overview you need to decide where to go, but if you already have an area in mind you'd be better off going straight to a sustrans local guide.


Alright if you don't mind some really bad routes thrown in.   August 17, 2004
 4 out of 4 found this review helpful

This was OK in parts, but maps were terrible, also vital directions were left out so without a decent map it was not easy to find your way in unsigned areas.

Directions are only given for one direction. If you want to go the other way difficult to follow, especially as the maps are so bad.

Part of the midlands routes takes you on incredibly dangerous roads and much time is spent on litter strewn paths on the side of dual carriageways.

We gave up with some of the routes when we had better maps and found much pretty and quieter places to cycle.

Oh yes and pretty out of date campsites marked on the map generally no longer existed.


A good reference guide but severly out of date   October 18, 2003
 5 out of 5 found this review helpful

Cycling Britain is good only as a basic reference guide; its good at pointing you where to get useful & accurate information but does not contain this information within it's pages. It is useful as an overall view of cycling routes in Britain, for planning a holiday but has far too few decent details at the local or even regional level. Okay, those are the positive points - onto the negative.

Cycling Britains maps are absolutely useless, a complete waste of space. Their scale is so large that they only give a sparse outline at best. Often, they deviate from the National Cycle Network, and quite frequently contain misleading & useless information, where they contain information at all! Distances can be quite far out, and accomodation information is completely out of date.

In summary, if you must use this book, photocopy the parts you need in the local library as it is a waste of space on any cycling holiday. Buy at your peril.


A good idea poorly executed   August 15, 2003
 11 out of 11 found this review helpful

Several times I considered throwing it out because of minor but extremely annoying inaccuracies. Eg a recommended hotel served me crisps for breakfast, parts of the sustrans network that the guide said may be rough were often muddy swamps (and this was in summer) and impossible to ride fully-loaded. If you want to do some touring and you've never cycled before, it might be helpful. But if you've got any clue at all about cycling, half of its (weighty) pages are a waste of valuable pannier room. And its routes, while good (though using too many main roads), feature stupidly-oriented maps and fail to link up with each other. Buying a road atlas (just rip out the relevant pages...) and scouring back copies of Cycling Plus or subscribing to the CTC would be a better investment.


Nice book, but needs more routes   June 30, 2003
Having found this book in Cambridge one day recently I thought that it would have many good routes, so I bought it.

I was a bit disappointed to see that the book did not contain any routes on the Outer Hebrides (Western Isles), where I have just returned from.

I thought that the book would have benefited from having Lonely Planet's approach to finding good B&Bs, etc. Having flicked through the book some more it has given me a few ideas for other cycling trips.

I eagerly look forward to the 2nd edition, and the widening of the routes featured. I agree with the comment about the maps and the way North jumps from page to page, but it does allow the maximum distance on one page.

Keep up the good work Lonley Planet! But bring out a 2nd edition soon please.....