On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 08:39:15PM +0100, 80n wrote: > > bicycle=yes and surface=gravel are an incompatible combination in my book ;)
There's gravel and there's gravel though - pea gravel like my grandfather had on his drive (in the New Forest!) and had to rake after cars had been over it is absolutely no good for cycling, while a self-binding gravel such as seen on http://www.pavingexpert.com/gravel05.htm is perfectly fine. I cycle a section of the Thames Path on my daily commute that comes into the latter category, and apart from the puddles tending to get larger each time it rains, it's just as good as the asphalt sections. The cycle paths in the New Forest are somewhere in between these two categories - while the Thames Path one could reasonably be labeled surface=dirt, the New Forest ones are definitely gravel, but it's well compacted and many of them will be cycled on by hundreds of people a week during the summer. http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/35904 http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/388784 http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/35915 http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/87018 http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/381057 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:New_Forest_Cycle_path.jpg From these photos it can be seen that there's quite a variety even within the National Park and depending on your style of bike you might want to avoid some or all of them. s _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
