The woods rat run

The woods rat run is a bikepacking route (loop) starting and finishing in Lyndhurst, New Forest. It is 160 miles long and is full of challenges. Some tough climbs and technical trails. Lots of single track that in the summer is overgrown with nettles and brambles and in the winter wetter months can be quite the bog fest. This route follows a mixture of trails from bridal ways by-ways forest tracks, and if you follow the official one a couple of footpaths for a short moment. The route will see you explore the New Forest, the Isle of Purbeck and Cranborne chase.

What you need to know

This route uses quite a lot of single track or rutty trails so good bike handling is a must, it can feel quite slow-going at times. In the summer, you will find the narrow trails full of brambles and nettles, so make sure you wear suitable clothing. In the winter, there are still some brambles, but mostly the trails will have turned to mulch, so again can be un-ridable or just very stop and start. Also, this route uses the promenade from Southbourne to sandbanks, which is closed to cyclist between July and august between 10pm-6pm.

I’m not sure why but this route has a couple of uses of footpaths, one being in the new forest, just past Mockbeggar, now I don’t personally mind, but the new forest is a bit funny about it. And another on the cutting onto the Wessex ridge way. Was blocked by a fallen tree here when I did this (December 2024)

You will probably want bigger tyres, Although in the summer the trails should be mostly hard packed and smoothed out. But depending on your bike handling skills and comfort on the bike, it might be on the rough side. In places.

You will be using the ferry from Sandbanks to Studland, so you will need to check that it is running. It runs most of the year but does occasionally go out of service for what ever reason. It is £1 for bikes (cash or contactless) Check Ferry service here

What I think

A lot of this route can be a lot of fun, however one thing I know for sure, as I have ridden all these trails lots of times, is that this route is in the wrong direction. Especially considering the vast majority of all the single track trails are up hill going in this direction, which makes it a little boring after a while. The single track trails I feel are a lot more fun going in a reverse direction of what this routes it plotted as. A lot of these trails can be a lot of fun and I use some of them often, however this route does have a habit of taking the off-road route just for the sake of it being off-road. Even if it doesn’t really add much. The bit after Swyer head is a bit pointless, especially in the direction of this route. The same with the pointless boggy bridalway from Rodger penny in the new forest. If you have done the new forest gravel taster, then you will know which one.

It’s a bit hard to follow, not much riding going on. And it’s so easy to avoid by going on a road for about 3 mins to get onto a nice gravel descent. Quite often I found this route would make odd choices in how it got to each trail. Below, I have edited the route to what I believe would be a slightly better version using trails that I think are more fun to ride and removed some unnecessary sections. Meaning you should be able to spend a bit more times actually riding. (Use the ALT GPX download for the revised route). Or view below on Komoot to see the difference. The red lines are the changes. I have left it in the same direction just to stay in the spirit of how it was created, but I do believe it would be more enjoyable if you reverse the route. This version should make the ride feel a little less of a grind in places. It’s still going to have its challenges, though.

Overall, this route does use a lot of fun trails and goes to some great places, but it is far from perfect. It feels a bit too tedious and stop and start, so I personally would not do this version again, but with a few tweaks like below I probably would ride it again. As to when you should ride it though is a tough one because ideally you need to ride it before it gets over grown but when it is also dry for a couple of weeks. However, if you do it in July/August then you need to detour through Bournemouth as the prom is shut. All in all though, some of the best bikepacking in the south of England in Wiltshire, so it’s a good place to explore.