The Guild Wheel: the 21-mile circular route around Preston

One continuous loop that touches the river, the canal, the docks, the farmland edge and most of the city's parks without ever entering the centre.

The Guild Wheel is a circular walking and cycling route of about 21 miles that runs right around Preston. It opened in 2012 to mark that year's Preston Guild, and unlike most commemorative projects it turned out to be the single most used piece of infrastructure the Guild produced. It is a green loop, largely traffic free, and it can be joined at any point on its circumference.

What makes it worth doing instead of merely available is that it is a genuine circuit instead of a there-and-back. Start anywhere, keep going in one direction, and you return to where you began having crossed the river, followed a canal, passed the docks and skirted open farmland, all without entering the city centre.

What the route actually links

Clockwise from the river, the Wheel follows the Ribble east past Fishwick and the eastern woodland, turns north through the Brockholes side of the valley, crosses the eastern suburbs near Ribbleton and Grange Park, and runs across the northern edge of the city through farmland.

It then picks up the Lancaster Canal towpath on the western side past Haslam Park, drops down to Preston Dock and the Riversway basin, and returns east along the Ribble beneath Avenham and Miller Parks to close the loop. That last stretch is the most attractive of the whole circuit.

Joining it, and splitting it into sections

Because it is a loop with no official start, the practical question is where to get on. The river path below Avenham and Miller Parks is the easiest access from the city centre and the prettiest opening. The canal towpath at Haslam Park is the flattest. Preston Dock is the best for parking and for a mid route break.

Twenty one miles is a comfortable half day by bike and a long day on foot, so most people walk it in quarters. The natural divisions are river to eastern woodland, eastern woodland to northern farmland, farmland to canal, and canal to dock and back along the river. Each quarter has a road crossing at each end, which makes it possible to walk one section and return by bus.

Surface, gradient and what to expect

Most of the Wheel is surfaced and level enough for a hybrid bike, and the sections along the canal and the river are the smoothest. The northern farmland stretches are rougher and can be soft after rain. There are short on road links where the traffic free route could not be made continuous, and these are signed.

The gradients are modest with one exception: the climbs in and out of the Ribble valley at the eastern end are genuine, because that is where the river has cut deepest. Anyone treating the route as flat should plan for that quarter to take longer than the mileage suggests.

Why the Guild produced a cycle route

The Preston Guild falls once every twenty years, and each Guild leaves something behind. The 2012 Guild left the Wheel, and the choice of a circular green route as opposed to a building has aged unusually well: it needs no funding to stay open, it serves everyday journeys as well as recreation, and it made the city's outer green space legible as a single system for the first time.

It is also why the route is named the way it is. The parks and outdoors index treats it as the spine that the parks and reserves hang from, which is how it works in practice.

Navigation, and the one thing that catches people out

The Wheel is waymarked throughout, but the signs assume you already know which way round you are going. At the points where the traffic free route has to use a short length of street, the sign that matters is the one taking you back off the road again, and it is easy to miss if you are looking at the road, not the verge.

The other thing worth knowing is that the loop is not symmetrical in effort. Going clockwise from the river puts the Ribble valley climbs early, while you are fresh, and finishes on the flat river path. Anticlockwise saves the climbs for the end. Most people who do it twice do it clockwise the second time.

Combining the Wheel with the parks

The Wheel deliberately runs around the outside of the city, so it touches the outer parks and misses the centre entirely. That makes it a poor route for sightseeing and an excellent one for distance. If you want both, the standard combination is a quarter of the Wheel plus a walk in through Avenham and Miller Parks to the Flag Market.

The reserves are the other reason to slow down. Fishwick and Boilton Wood are both immediately off the eastern river section, and neither is signed from the route as a destination, so they are missed by almost everyone who cycles past them.