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Curious if anyone here did this ride today? Salisbury plain is a marvellous place to ride, I love it. However as we drove north from Amesbury today along the main A345 I was pretty horrified to see that the route was taking riders along this road.
For me cycling on this road is a non starter, and I can’t imagine why an organised event would take people along it. Especially when the website mentions quiet country lanes and gravel tracks.
Just curious if anyone did it how they found cycling on the A road, and how usual is that for a paid for event?
I did it today - didn’t really notice the roads being too busy or ropey. There were a few more road-miles than I was expecting, but think they had to do some re-routing at short notice due to MoD exercises.
I was involved in planning the route, we did use a short section on the A road from a feed stop in Netheravon to turning off towards Larkhill. It wasn't our first choice but an unexpected change to the red flag restrictions on the Plains meant we had to avoid a section of byway that we had planned to use. In the planning and completing the risk assessments I'd ridden that stretch several times and at different times of day and felt it was an ok compromise especially versus getting shot or run over by a tank.
I wouldn't set out to plan routes using A roads and try to avoid them where possible but if you're planning a 100km+ ride especially in the south of England you'll inevitably have to cross or use a section of A road at some point especially if for an event where you need to go via towns/villages for suitable feed stop locations.