Guidebooks and Public Transport

Posted by Jon Sparks Jun 4, 2007

I’ve just received a couple of guides from Rough Ride Guides, covering mountain bike rides in the south-west and south-east. That’s south-west England, so no Moab or Marin County, but believe me places like the Quantocks are a fair exchange. (The Quantocks is where my real mountain biking began, but that’s another story). For a broader review see here. Meanwhile I’ve a bee in my bonnet.

I mention in the main review that the ‘information on public transport options is a bit skimpy.’ I do regard this as a serious criticism. It’s difficult, as I’ve mentioned before, to trumpet the environmental benefits of if everyone puts their bikes on the car to get to their rides.

However, this is a woefully common fault with many British guidebooks, and not just biking ones. The Rough Ride Guides do score much better than many others, usually mentioning when there is a station nearby, but don’t give further detail such as which line it’s on or how to get from the station to the ride. There’s at least one description that mentions a railway station as a landmark but still doesn’t suggest that you could get to that ride by train!

This is not as good as it should be but it’s still miles better than many guides which never even acknowledge that public transport exists. I think this is unforgivable. Interestingly, cycling guides seem to do better in this respect than walking guides, despite the fact that all public transport is (obviously) suitable for walkers, while not all welcomes cyclists.

In this respect I think a big thumbs-down should go to Jeremy Ashcroft’s Mountain Bike Guide to the Lake District, Howgill Fells and Yorkshire Dales, published by Ernest Press. This, which was I believe the first mountain bike guidebook in the UK, has two pages on ‘Environment’ and never a mention of public transport.

Admittedly ideas have moved on a bit since 1989 but a much more recent publication is Off-Road Trails and Quiet Lanes by Keith Bradbury, published by Vertebrate Graphics in 2006. In most respects it's a beautiful production, with good maps and fabulous photography, but it’s almost perverse in its assumption that the only conceivable way to get to the start of a ride is by car. It even complains at one point about slow drivers on Lake District roads. Can this really be a cyclist speaking? As far as I’m concerned, when I’m on my bike, it’s the ones who drive too fast that we should be worrying about.