If you know the Bournemouth -Poole conurbation youll know that the hills and wild country is in Canford Heath in the North, and Bournemouth town centre where any culture is, is by the beach in the middle of the bay. If you ever travel between the Poole area and the Bournemouth town area youll also know that most of the roads between these two places are queues during happy hour, like when you need to use them before work or after work all week. Now, I love going out in the Red Rocket on a sunday morning to running events.
However even the owner dosent bother with it in the week and cycles to work by choice, yes hes a hero, but he does it to avoid the queues. Mountbatten arms anybody? Wallisdown road anybody? Im going to show you a way of forgetting the 45 minute journey, sitting in the queues at 10 M.P.H, checking the phone, getting more arteriosclerotic every day and instead taking the best possible routes in the conurbation by bike, hell you might even get fit for free, arrive awake and earn youre reward beers on the way home. Im staying in Creekmoor at present, and this masterstroke of directional excellence hit me last night on a ride back from teaching in Charminster. The key factor of this route is the Bourne Valley – the stream that originates in Canford bad lands, and snakes down to the Sea through the Greenway in a perfect South easterly direction. Its the lungs of our area, stuffed with SSSI’s thats sites of specific scientific interest and I love it. I love it because there are some of my favourite plants here that only grow in the really wild places of the U.K- Im digressing a bit so just gonna share one with you. Bog Asphodel. Heaven, frangipani, the most exotic fragrance in the world, would make a mans fragrance from this if I could.
Sorry back on topic. Okay this route starts the West End of Routes vs Queues 4 click here-
and joins at the start of Routes vs Queues 1 click here-
Instead of climbing up Parkstone Heights to Seaview, we exit the Dorset Way underpass turning left then climb Old Wareham road, its an on road section- the only major on road Ive included in these Routes vs Queues posts and after reaching Herbert Avenue and negotiating the little double roundabout with care, youre back onto quality. Turning into Evering ave, go perfectly east until the end and carry on in same direction over the gravel spine above the Bourne Valley, you may see some cows here, and if your an adventurer find some seasonal wild plants. At the end drop left and the meet the end of Bloxworth road a back road in same direction to the end of Alder Hills. Here you meet Routes vs Queues 1, and can continue into the centre of Bournemouth.
The map photo above is marked with Red for this route, wheras the Blue dotted lines show you where the queues will be found every day, there could be more. A superb route by bike, there is so much to discover in Bournemouth, we should be glad that the building planners left us several green spaces within the whole conurbation. The benefits of active travel are now so glaringly obvious that even the old guard Councillors are starting to work at promoting cycling, somewhat different appreciation of the bike now as compared to my previous 30 years travelling. Theres very little to lose, do let me know how you find these Routes vs Queues they open up a new idea of our area.