What I learned from riding the Way of the Roses, from London

I’ve come back from Bridlington, the finish line of the ‘Way of the Roses,’ and have written up this short blog post which I hope may be instructive to your future cycle trip plans, whether using this route or another. I’m doing my best to keep it helpful and concise. For your information, this trip was in mid-June 2025.

The Way of the Roses is genuinely a really fantastic route and your bike is probably fine for it, with a caveat

When I was first shown the route, I thought it might be the typical ‘UK cycle network’ kind of deal, using bumpy and constantly-interrupted pavements next to really ghastly roads, but my experience from start to end was tremendous. Across 3.5 days of riding I had only one unpleasant driver interaction, and that was in a town (just a horn beep from someone in a rush).

The bike I’d brought, a Merlin Malt, uses Shimano 105 50/34-tooth chainrings on the front, but on the back, has a Sunrace 11-46 cassette which I’ve made work using a Sunrace derailleur hanger extender. Using this combo I 100% rode all of this ride’s climbs, even with my (estimated) 15-20 kg of camping gear, clothes, food, water and bike. For me, I’d not do this route without a gear this low, and ideally, lower, so do take that into account when you’re planning your trip. Of course there’s nothing wrong with walking and pushing but I really prefer to avoid it when possible.

My tyres (700c 35mm Schwalbe All-rounds) were fine. Across the c. 275 km route, there is maybe 5-10 kilometres of ‘gravel’ or more accurately ‘bad road’. Normal road tyres would be fine for the rest of it in good weather, though I do like having somewhat wider ones for comfort. I had one puncture on my tubeless back wheel on the last day which I sealed with a ‘dynaplug.’

The 34-46 bottom gear really paid dividends on this route

Camping is fun, but not mandatory for this ride, even on a budget

Me and my ride friend Elliot brought our camp stuff, and did enjoy a ‘wild camp’ (no fires, leave no trace etc) on our first night, and it was terrific, but I think if I were to do this again, I’d just use youth hostels. We booked a youth hostel for our second night because the morning of the last day was looking really torrential, and we could use a hot shower. To our shock we got an entire four-person room in York City Youth Hostel for £35 with next to no notice. Naturally this comes with using the showers, which I was able to use to launder all my clothes, too. This is as simple as wearing them in the shower and just washing yourself all over as you would normally, and then rinsinging it all off and drying it out the window, or better, wearing a slightly damp long sleeve jersey that really does help with the evening warmth and slowly dries out using your body heat.

I don’t regret bringing the camp stuff and pitching up on the night that we did at all, but it would certainly have made the climbs easier. Two friends we later met up with had stayed in a Premier Inn for just over £100 for the night, and they were both allowed their bikes in the room as normal. Speaking of this, the York City Youth Hostel had a very good secure bike storage room and I’d use it again without hesitation.

It wasn’t a heat wave, but I found myself sweating a lot either way, as these salt stains show. This cap washed up nicely with some shower gel in the youth hostel

For camping, Elliot had the hammock and I had the bivvy bag. We hung up my 3×3 metre tarp to keep the wind off and we are both quite used to this system so there were no real dramas to speak of. We did also catch a nice sunset. My Sungpak travelpak 2 sleeping bag, snugpak thermal liner, Alpkit inflatable mat and bivvy bag met the brief very well and I was perfectly insulated even when the temperature hit its bottom somewhere around 4 or 5 AM.

This was my first trip using panniers. They have a lot to recommend to them aside from just being big; if you need to climb over a fence, hang your bike on a hook on the train or similar, they’re easy to clip off temporarily. The only problem I have with them is they tempt you in to bringing more things than are perhaps strictly necessary. I carried them on a Tortec expedition rack which held up brilliantly.

Getting there and back from London by train isn’t too inconvenient, though expensive

I paid to get to and from the Way of the Roses by train. Even off-peak, my tickets were £85 each way, making my getting there and back cost £170. This is obviously completely outrageous, as a return flight from London to Rome is as cheap as £80 on its own. In future I’d try harder to mob up with two others to make it a ‘groupsave’ trip. Groupsave (which is any group of 3 or more) gets you 1/3 off of the fare, and on trips like this is quite a substantial sum, especially since I’m ineligible for any railcards. Sadly I was the only person coming from London this time so it wasn’t an option.

We finished the ride on a Saturday evening, so I took advantage of the time left in the day and jumped on the trains back to London. It was certainly trickier getting home from Bridlington, because I had to get a slow train to Doncaster and then change, but on the whole not so bad. I bought a ticket in Bridlington and then Facebook Messaged the train company for the journey onward from Doncaster for a bike reservation, which worked out quite well. It is absolutely essential that you get a reservation for journeys going to or from London if you want to be sure of being allowed on.

The Way of the Roses start point of Morecambe Bay is a 15-20 minute detour from Lancaster station and is worth the time

Did I mention that the route is great?

This felt like my first road cycling holiday in a long time, really since I did the Caledonia Way with my pal Lucy nearly half a decade ago. I tend to avoid road riding purely on the basis of ‘why would I willingly ride with traffic,’ but routes like this are really very quiet and the good decidedly outweighs the bad. I still love off road cycling but on asphalt there’s no doubt that you can really enjoy the smoothness of the road, you’re not being bumped about nearly so much from the surfaces, and it is much kinder on your clothes and your gear.

If you’re looking for a medium to long distance road ride and tour I would recommend the Way of the Roses to you without hesitation, though I would just say it would be wise to ensure whoever you’re going with is confident in road riding and wouldn’t feel nervous or exposed being on the route, because it is pretty much entirely on roads accessible to cars, despite it being quiet.

This was about as ‘technical’ as it got on this ride; across the approximate 275 km of route, maybe around 10 of that is off-road on surfaces like this, which was no problem in summer even for the person in our group with the narrowest tyres

Summing up and further info

Thanks to reading, and thank you to Elliot, Anna and Madi for your amazing company on this trip. You can read more about the Way of the Roses, including route info at this website, though I should mention, the route itself is signposted throughout if you prefer to not use a computer. You can find .gpx files for it on the internet very easily.

For more about my bivvy bag and why I like using it, I’ve written a post about it here. I’ve also written a post up about tubeless tyres and why I like using them, and the Dynaplug I used to seal a puncture.

I encourage you to do this route while the days are long. Happy riding!