The road less travelled

bompington

So the other week I decided to take the long way to work, which meant the back roads through the hills west of Dundee. And setting out a bit earlier - in January that is, over 2 hours before sunrise.

I really enjoyed the empty roads - which is to say, really empty. When I checked on strava I had been going for over 38 minutes before I saw a single vehicle on the road (full disclosure: there was a tractor in a field).

That's pretty good for "just getting to work" but not my record - that's over an hour on an early morning ride in the wilds of Argyll.

What's your personal best for empty roads?

oxoman

40 minutes before seeing a moving vehicle, but that's at 4.15 in the morning and on a wkend. Probably 30 minutes in the wk. Unfortunately I see stationary parked cars pretty much from the offset apart from 15 minute countryside section between villages.

veronese68

I think I'd count it in seconds rather than minutes.

slowbike

Despite being south coast based, I'm pretty lucky in that most of the time it is minutes between seeing a car on my commute in - and that's main road stuff - if I do backroads it can be a "very long time" between vehicles - but even then, my commute is still less than an hour and I have to do some main road sections - so I'm going to see someone!

Charlie_Croker

veronese68 said:

I think I'd count it in seconds rather than minutes.

I hear that!
I’m so envious of folk like the OP (apart from the midges) who have this opportunity to cycle alone once in a while

bobmcstuff

Yeah I did start typing a reply to this but then I remembered I did see a few cars early on, it was just hardly any compared to usual.

Last year I cycled from Manchester to Bristol, started 5am on a Saturday, hardly saw anyone for the first hour or so. But I definitely did see a car within the first few mins cos I had to cross the A34 to get out of the Manchester suburb I live in and you will always see cars there.

Cycling out over the Cheshire plains with the sun coming up through the trees and the mist on the fields was quite magical though.

bobmcstuff

Thinking harder, I actually probably saw fewer cars when touring up around Altnaharra (middle of nowhere, Scotland), it's just less remarkable to see hardly any cars there so you don't remember it. I cycled a fair bit of the NC500 route before the NC500 was a thing, starting from Lairgs and riding up to Tongue and Durness, you are on some pretty remote "A" roads there (which are smaller than most lanes near Manchester!).

Charlie_Croker

bobmcstuff said:

...Last year I cycled from Manchester to Bristol, started 5am on a Saturday, hardly saw anyone for the first hour...

Wow          Just Wow!...

joe_totale-2

That's the appeal of gravel riding for me, you don't see anyone else for hours sometimes. Just a shame there isn't much of the stuff in the South East.