Beginner

Anglers Country Park cycling for families

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Anglers Country Park is an award-winning Green Flag destination where you can explore the unspoiled countryside, woodland, wetland and trails.

Anglers Country Park is in Wintersett, Wakefield. Once known as one of the deepest open cast coal mines, Anglers has since been transformed into a park which welcomes thousands of visitors a month. It has also flourished into a beautiful haven for wildlife including many migratory birds making it a perfect place to visit whether you are in or from the surrounding area.

We love Anglers because it has a central lake with a 2-mile trail around the edges. It’s a perfect place to cycle with small children as the terrain is flat and child safe. There’s also a Room on the broom trail as well as a playpark for the kids. Parking is completely free for the first two hours but living in Sandal we are able to travel to Anglers on the old Barnsley canal path.

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Leeds Urban Bike Park Cycling For Families

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Leeds Urban Bike Park is a gem of a project by Leeds council, the lottery funded and British Cycling & Sports England. At the top part of Middleton park is a mountain bike trail centre and BMX Track, a bike shop with a workshop and a cafe. The bike park consists of multiple different trails across all difficulty levels.

It’s incredibly family-friendly and is suitable for all ages. Best of all it’s completely free of charge. It connects nicely with the wider Middleton park meaning you can enjoy the facilities available including kids park and much more.

It’s run as a community project meaning it’s not for profit. Parking and the bike park are completely free but you can support them by purchasing items in the bike store or in the cafe.

There’s an abundance of courses and circuits that continue into the woodland. Our daughter absolutely loved it and we could have stayed for hours. Even for non-riders Middleton park has plenty of walking trails for you to enjoy.

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Pugneys Country Park cycling for families

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Pugneys Country Park is a 250-acre park located on the A636 between Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England and Junction 39 of the M1 motorway. It is a Local Nature Reserve. The area was developed from a former opencast mine and a sand and gravel quarry and was opened to the public in 1985.

As residents of Sandal, we live close to Pugneys park, meaning we’ve visited quite frequently over the years. Best of all it’s accessible via bike for those who live in the local area. If you live in Sandal you can take the route down Milnthorpe Lane and past the Farm that the Castle overlooks. From here you can pick up a public footpath route to Pugneys.

If you are not local it’s still a wonderful place to visit. With watersports, a children’s play area, a cafe and a miniature railway there’s plenty to keep you entertained for the whole day.

Best of all it’s cycle friendly and with a 1.6-mile flat gravel loop around the lake, it’s very much possible for children of all ages to enjoy.

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Walton Colliery Nature Park cycling for families

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The nature park is on the site of the old Walton Colliery (formerly Sharlston West Colliery).
Walton has a long history of coal mining, with documentary evidence of estate and field names dating local mining activities back to the 17th century. In the 1930’s it’s said up to 1200 people worked at the colliery. It eventually closed in 1979.

From 1993 work began to turn this once industrial mine into a place for nature. Work was eventually completed in 1996 and designated a local nature reserve in 2008.

Walton Colliery is now a nature park filled with lakes and wildflowers and offers hiking, cycling and equestrian trails. It’s a wonderful example of a rewilding project and how a former industrial site can become a place where walkers, cyclists and horse owners can enjoy peace within calm surroundings.

As a family, it’s a great place to visit with your children. Traffic-free routes, well-maintained services; an enclosed, safe area for them to express their cycling ability.

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Knaresborough to Ripley (Nidderdale Greenway) Cycle Route For Families

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Where does the ride take me?

The reason this is called 2.0 is because the first time we completed this route (but the other way round) was on Daddy’s Day a few weeks ago but unfortunately something happened to me that has never happened before…all of the photos I took had not been saved when I looked the next day. I was a little upset as I had taken care to picture everything I thought important to guide another family on the trip however we just decided it was no biggie and we would just have to do the route again asap! 

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Sandal to Nostell Priory cycle route

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As a family, we always enjoyed spending time outside vs indoors. Over the past two years, this however has been heightened by government lockdowns and the need for micro-adventures on our doorstep.

I spend a lot of time on my bike; both with the family and individually. There’s nothing more liberating than exploring your local area by bike. It’s great for your body and mind too!

One of the primary reasons we moved to Sandal was due to the many walking spots on the doorstep. When utilising a bike this becomes a whole additional arena of enjoyment.

My main goal is to find cycle safe routes to places in the surrounding area. Recently I managed to make it to the wonderful National Trust Nostell Priory while largely avoiding main roads and cars. Not only does this make a more enjoyable ride but also a safer one too.

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Rabbit Ings Country Park Cycling for Families

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As a family, we are always on the lookout for new safe cycle paths to explore. With a 5-year-old and a 1-year-old cycling is the perfect activity for the whole family. It’s free, safe and great exercise.

Living in Sandal, Wakefield we try and explore as many places as local to our home as possible. As a former mining area, we are lucky that a number of the former Collieries have been turned into Nature reserves and cycle paths making them perfect for a family afternoon visit.

In the October half-term holidays, we took a trip to Rabbit Ings Country Park in Royston which is 5 miles from our home. With our bikes safely secured on our bike rack, we ventured along to check out the cycle paths.

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Spofforth – Wetherby Railway Path Cycling for Families

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As a family, we are always on the lookout for new safe cycle paths to explore. With a 5-year-old and a 1-year-old cycling is the perfect activity for the whole family. It’s free, safe and great exercise. Our little boy Barney loves sitting on the back taking in all the nature as we ride along.

We recently came across the Wetherby Railway Path which is a disused Railway line connecting the village of Spofforth with Wetherby and continues through to Thorp Arch. In the October half term we ventured across to take the bikes on the route.

This route was created by Sustrans who are a charity whose sole purpose is to make it easier for people to walk and cycle. The roads have become hell zones in the past 10 years with cyclists (literally) pushed to the side. The rise in SUVs has compounded this further and made road cycling a less safe place to be.

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