• Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Posts
  • Twitter

Clive Goes Cycling

and other Curious Tales

  • Blog
  • Books
  • Equipment
  • Featured
  • Personal
  • Reviews
  • Routes
  • Running
You are here: Home / Featured / A Cycling Trip to Bournemouth, Dorset

A Cycling Trip to Bournemouth, Dorset

August 19, 2016 by Clive Leave a Comment

My bike on the quay with ferry approaching
My bike waiting for the approaching ferry

I went on a weekend cycling trip to Bournemouth with some friends recently. We spent two days in the area and cycled a couple of circular routes in Dorset, including the Isle of Purbeck.

  • We’re a group of 50-something guys.
  • We like to cover a few miles on our trips but we aren’t club cyclists.
  • We have hybrid/town/commuting bikes (like this one) not road bikes. This, and our ages, means that we’re not the fastest (but we get there in the end).

Where We Stayed

We stayed at The Wessex Hotel (on Trip Advisor), which is a large hotel on the western side of Bournemouth. It has a big car park and is easy to find from the main A338. The hotel was welcoming and the staff helpful with storing our bikes in rooms inside the hotel. The buffet breakfast, especially the choice of cereals, fruit, yoghurt and pastries, was great. Just what you need before a long day’s cycling in the Dorset countryside!

The hotel was comfortable with large bedrooms although the decor was slightly dated. Nothing that would stop me staying there again though.

The Cycling Routes

Isle of Purbeck and Blandford Forum

Here’s a map of the first day’s cycling:

  • This is the Dorset route from Great British Bike Rides: 40 Classic Routes for Road Cyclists.

The route goes west from Bournemouth and into Sandbanks. We took the Sandbanks chain ferry across Poole Harbour. The ferry runs every 20 minutes and costs £1 for cyclists.

After the crossing, we cycled picturesque countryside on the Isle of Purbeck, past Corfe Castle, and through the Purbeck Hills before heading north to Blandford Forum. Just before BF, we stopped for lunch (at the Hambro Arms pub) in the delightful village of Milton Abbas. I’ve been through that area before on my Blandford Forum cycling trip but Milton Abbas was just as lovely as I remembered it. There’s a tough little climb out of the village that I had almost forgotten though!

The only drawback to this route was the busy road into Poole near the end of the trip. There are cycle paths through Poole but be prepared to stop and check signage regularly.

We originally planned to finish the day by cycling back to the hotel via the promenade into Bournemouth but this isn’t permitted between 10 am and 6 pm during summer months. Check timings before you do this! We were stopped by a ‘promenade ranger’.

No problem. The promenade would have been nicer but we took a busier road back to the hotel.

Overall, for the first day.

  • 89.90 miles
  • 3,911 ft elevation gain
  • 11.8 mph average speed

North of Bournemouth and east of the New Forest

Here’s a map of the route:

On day 2, we cycled a shorter and flatter route (thanks for devising the route, Brian), along the promenade (a gentle start to the day) to Christchurch, heading north, and skirting Ringwood and the eastern edge of the New Forest. After that, the route went west as far as Witchampton before we turned south back to Bournemouth.

The route is mostly country lanes but we also cycled an off-road cycleway after a lunch stop (a cafe in the town square) in Wimborne Minster. Some of the group stopped at a pub in Gussage All Saints (great name!) for their lunch.

The second day was just what we needed to ‘recover’ after the much hillier first day. We all arrived back at the hotel in late afternoon, ready for the evening’s traditional end-of-trip curry!

  • 60.37 miles
  • 1,603 ft elevation gain
  • 11.6 mph average speed

Overall

Great trip. Great routes. Lovely and varied countryside, especially the first day. Some tough climbs through the Purbeck Hills (oh, really?!) and the first half of that day. Much less ‘elevation’ on our second day’s route though.

Yes, I’d love to go back to the area again.

Further Reading

  • There are some great routes, including the Dorset ride from the first day of our trip, in Great British Bike Rides: 40 Classic Routes for Road Cyclists.

Filed Under: Featured, Routes

You Might Be Interested In

→ Cyclist – Ride: The greatest cycling routes in the world

Explore 50 of the greatest, most thrilling road cycling routes the world has to offer, guided by the experts at the world's biggest road cycling magazine.

→ Cyclist – Ride: The greatest cycling routes in the world

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Search

Promotion

Garmin Edge 530, Performance GPS Cycling/Bike Computer

Garmin Edge 530

Latest Comments

  • Clive on Review of XOSS G Cycle Computer
  • Rickey Heart on Review of XOSS G Cycle Computer
  • Clive on Review of XOSS G Cycle Computer
  • Steven on Review of XOSS G Cycle Computer
  • Pete Norman on Cycling the Devon Coast-to-Coast Route

Books

A life without limits cover image

A Life Without Limits by Chrissie Wellington

I have to confess that I didn’t know anything about Chrissie Wellington, the four-times Ironman World Champion, before reading this book. But, what a story!

Great British Bike Rides

Great British Bike Rides

This is a great book for discovering rides and planning cycle trips in the UK. It describes 40 fantastic road routes from Southern England to Scotland. It’s one of my favourite books.

South West Mountain Biking cover

South West Mountain Biking – Quantocks, Exmoor, Dartmoor

South West Mountain Biking is a brilliant little book that describes 26 mountain bike rides, between 10 km and 30 km, in Dartmoor, Exmoor and the Quantock Hills

Cycling Days Out South East England cover

Cycling Days Out: South East England

This is an attractively designed and well thought-out book with a wealth of information about leisure cycling routes in the south east of England, including Kent, Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire.

South East Mountain Biking book cover

South East Mountain Biking: North & South Downs

A compact and nicely designed guide to some of the best off-road mountain biking routes in the South East of England.

Blog Latest

Cycling to work in Horsham, West Sussex

A few thoughts about cycle commuting in Horsham In late 2016, I changed my workplace from home … [Read More...]

What parkrun means to me

I've made it. 100 parkruns completed. The Saturday morning run in a local park (mostly Horsham in my … [Read More...]

More blog posts

Friends

  • Horsham Pub Guide A guide to country pubs near Horsham, West Sussex
  • Rosebank House A Bed and Breakfast in Porlock, Somerset
  • Social Hiking Plot your hiking or cycle routes on a map with photos and tweets
  • The Cliff Hotel, Bude A friendly hotel in Bude, Cornwall

Copyright © 2025 Clive Walker · Made with by CVW Web Design in Horsham