Rea Valley Cycle Route

This is a great route for taking the kids. We usually start and finish at Canon Hill. This is mainly becuase it’s the best place for refreshments, toilet stops etc. If you have to bring the car with you it’s also the best place for parking up.
We tend to go as far as Kings Norton, mainly because we have to come back on ourselves. If I were doing the route without children, I would use the roads to make it a circular ride.
It’s an easy ride, nice and flat. When you do have to come off the tarmac and onto roads they are well signposted, quiet and are littered with safe crossing points.
We like the canal bit best, it’s generally quite quiet too and all the people you meet both on the water and on the paths are really friendly.

For me the River Rea route is one of the nicest rides in Birmingham.
Once you start to leave the Cannon Hill Park and find yourself alongside the River Rea, there’s a noticeable difference in feeling, perhaps, it’s the smooth winding tarmac path and the effect of the river running alongside or the increasingly wooded area surrounding the route but suddenly you get the feeling that you are much further away from the city than in fact you are.
As the route leads you past the little ford, you may well see people playing in the water there, which lends to the warm communal feel of the place.
Passing over the River Rea you find yourself on the final stretch which offers views of the university and large playing fields.
It’s worth taking the return trip after dark as the route is lit by lttle solar powered lights, sort of like a runway and the street lamps along the route create an evocative scene.

I love the Rea Valley cycle route. My love for it is unhindered by the fact that I still don’t know how to pronounce it (the ‘Rea’ bit, that is. Not ‘Valley’, ‘cycle’ or ‘route’, I hasten to add). To be honest, I love any urban cycle route that gives you a completely different perspective on a city. It starts in the backstreets of atmospheric Digbeth, takes you through Edgbaston, Balsall Heath, Kings Heath, Stirchley, Northfield, Kings Norton and out to the Waseley Hills. This sounds like a heck of a long way, but in fact is only 10 miles. And you get to take in at least 4 parks along the way.
It’s fairly flat and relatively easy, so a lot of people from south Birmingham actually use this route to commute if they work in town — you can join up with the canal network in Gas Street basin also. Speeding merrily along the River Rea, through some of Birmingham’s best green spaces and then onto the canals: that’s got to be a hundred times better than sitting in bumper-​to-​bumper traffic on the Pershore Road every morning. And it’s good for the environment too, of course. What’s not to love? Well, it’s not all parks and canals, unfortunately. But at least it brings a different perspective to an otherwise dull potential commute.