The Greater Ridgeway

The Greater Ridgway is a 400 mile bikepacking route, either starting on the south coast from Lyme Regis and finishing at the North Sea at a place called Holme-next-sea or vice versa, I went from the North Sea to the English Channel, going this way means the ride gets harder the more miles you cover, most of the challenging parts of this ride are actually towards Dorset, there are challenges along the whole route but the Dorset section of this route is generally not that fun, mostly overgrown trails, riddled with gates. This makes this route more of a MTB route over the gravel bike check out (The Old chalk way) for a more gravel bike friendly version of this route, it cleans up a lot of the Dorset section. It uses more ridable trails that flow so much better.

This Route follows the Pedders way, Ickneilds way, The Ridgway and Wessex Ridgway (Reverse order if staring in Lyme) These are all well-used and fairly well signposted which makes following them nice and easy, once you get onto each one.

Like I mentioned before I think the MTB is going to be the better choice of bike here, if the trails are wet especially while riding along the ridgeway, if it gets wet it gets really claggy, and you will want all the mud clearance. But it will be manageable for a lot of this ride on the gravel bike especially in the summer, it’s when you are tackling the Wessex Ridgway that you might find it gets a bit too much for the gravel bike, and you might find yourself with a fair bit of hike a bike. It’s probably better to start in Lyme Regis and get the hard stuff over with early, you will also have more chance of a tailwind staring in the south, if you start in the south the ride gets easier as Norfolk is flat

Getting to the end of this route is very rewarding and as it’s a coast-to-coast adventure you can finish up with a nice swim.

The nearest public transport from Lyme is at Axminster and Kings Lynn from Holme.