National Cycle Route 12
Grimsby
Ride Overview
Linking Enfield (home of the rifle) in North London to Spalding, (the bulb capital of Great Britain), National Cycle Route 12 is a gentle journey for the curious on a mix of segregated cycleways, quiet lanes and field-edge bridleways. There’s a feast of unexpected pleasures including riding under the huge skies of the east, the gentle hills, the museums and memorials to the aircraft and men of WWII, some glorious churches, villages, abbeys and a lot of the quiet countryside that is so England.
Good cycleways carry you out from Enfield Lock through which rifles and munitions left the factory in order to forge and Empire. From here hard-packed bridleways and woodland tracks take you through south Hertfordshire to Hatfield and its magnificent house. Field-edge trails thread through Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire, firm and fast in dry weather, over medieval bridges and through utopian 'garden cities'.
Out in the Fenland, NCN 12 continues to Peterborough's magnificent cathedral. Fields of tulips and daffodils surround Spalding.
Ride Practicalities
START/FINISH: Enfield Lock, North London DISTANCE: 212km. TOTAL ASCENT: 1,207m TERRAIN AND SURFACES: Segregated cycle-ways, quiet back roads, field-edge paths and some short sections on busier than ideal ‘B’ roads. FOOD AND DRINK: Enfield: Forty Hall, Letchworth (Willian): The Fox, Stevenage (Codicote): Ridge Farm, SpokesCC, SUGGESTED STAYS: Hatfield: The Comet Hotel, Letchworth (Willian): The Fox, Huntingdon: The Bridge Inn MAINLINE TRAIN SERVICES: All towns ridden through have regular trains back to London, served by the East Coast Main Line LINKS TO OTHER RIDES: London to Grimsby
Ride Notes
Day 1: Enfield to Hatfield (~35km)
Allowing time to arrive in Enfield in North London (easily reached by train from Liverpool Street), it's an easy first day, with time built in for a visit to Hatfield House.
After cycle lanes taking you through Enfield and Edmonton (there are prettier parts of London it must be said, but its a short time before you arrive at Forty Hall, a fascinating house with a great café. From here, you ride on firm bridleways and field-edge paths to Hatfield. The day ends at Hatfield House, a Jacobean masterpiece and one of the Treasures of England, where, amongst other fabulous items, you can see the 6.7-metre illuminated parchment tracing Elizabeth I's lineage back — imaginatively — to Adam and Eve.
Stay: The Comet Hotel, Hatfield
Day 2: Hatfield to Huntingdon (~80km) A short spin brings you into Welwyn Garden City, conceived in 1920 by Sir Ebenezer Howard as a marriage of town and country, followed by Stevenage — Britain's first post-war new town, utopian too in its way, and whose excellent cycling network makes navigation easy despite its brutal concrete. Then Letchworth, Howard's original garden city experiment, leafy and genteel. Beyond the garden cities, bridleways and field tracks carry you through a gentle, unhurried landscape — horses in neighbouring fields, crops growing quietly, villages. At Great Barford, a magnificent medieval bridge spans the Great Ouse. The route then follows country lanes mixed with cycle lanes into Huntingdon, birthplace of Oliver Cromwell, where the high street offers five hundred years of English architecture in a single glance.
Stevenage Town Centre
Day 3: Huntingdon to Boston (~110km) The longest day but almost entirely flat. Square-cornered Fenland lanes whisk you to Stilton, whose famous cheese was never actually made here — supplies were likely sourced from Leicestershire and sold through the landlord of the Bell Inn, a 15th-century coaching inn on the Great North Road that still stands today.
A cycle path runs alongside the Great North Road into Peterborough. The cathedral's west front — three vast pointed arches over deep carved recesses — is among the most idiosyncratic and impressive in Britain. Inside, the painted ceiling has been described as a 'carpet in the sky'.
Beyond Peterborough, the Fens open up completely. Vast skies, enormous fields and, as you approach Spalding, there are (in spring) fields of daffodils and tulips. The area is known as Little Holland, a name which was given back in the 18th century when Dutchmen, against the wishes of the locals but with the full support of the government, drained the land. In the centre of town, is a statue commemorating the hiring of farm hands for the season, done with a shake of a hand. The route finishes at Spalding Station.
There are plans - which have existed for 25 years or more - to extend Route 12 to Grimsby, a much more fulfilling destination. Indeed the ‘official map of the National Cycle Routes shows it as a dotted line through the Lincolnshire Wolds and onto the coast. To ride the complete route from the centre of London to Grimsby, click here
Crowland Abbey
Every route on this website has been carefully researched as well as ridden. However situations on the ground can change quickly. If you know of changes to this route, or cafes, pubs and the like which you think other cyclists need to know about, feel free to share your thoughts below.
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