Bikepacking the m5, not everyone idea of the ideal bikepacking route, I’m sure. This year though I have been making my way around the busy roads of the UK including the M25, Britain’s busiest motorway, the M6, Britain’s longest motorway, And of course the A1 Britain’s longest road and now the M6 apparently Britain most popular motorway. Who knew. Starting in the west midland in Birmingham and finishing in the south-west at Exeter, the m5 spans about 160 miles, whereas if you choose to follow this route then you will take the scenic route at around 230 miles. Although you are following the m5 pretty closely for this route, you do get to ride along some nice trails, some easy some a little rougher but all ridable give or take a couple overgrown sections at certain times of the year, some nice flat canals to avoid busy roads as you leave Birmingham, some nice flowy trails through the Cotswolds, a brief visit to the Quantock hills as well as the Blackdown hills.

The route is a mixture of off-road trails country lanes and canals, the route over all is quite easy to ride but does go through built-up areas where the cycle infrastructure is well crap so you will want to be comfortable riding with traffic on occasions the further south you get the quieter everything seemed to get, and you will spend more time in the countryside, but still quite close to the m5, you will be able to hear it for nearly the hole ride. That just the nature of these challenges. The trails themselves are fairly easy to ride with little being very technical, mostly bridleways through fields, mostly well trodden paths that are easy to follow, but you will want to have a GPS for mapping. But a gravel bike will serve you well, anything with 40mm tyres or bigger, and you should be good to go. The only reason I am putting this in intimidate is because of the closeness to busy built-up areas, if you are comfortable riding in the occasional traffic then I think this will be easy for most people as there are a lot of pan flat sections and all the hills are fairly easy. Maybe a little hike a bike section as you enter the Cotswolds, but it’s fairly short, and the views are great.

Not much else to say about this one, you are following the m5 using what’s left of nature beside it.

I don’t expect many people to take on this route, but if you want to, you can download the GPX file below or check it out of Komoot.