Bristol crowned best city in the UK for most relaxed bike rides

Bristol has been ranked as the UK city with the best leisurely bike riding routes and ninth globally in a recent study by electric bike experts, Auto Trader.

The study was carried out after the company had noticed a 15% increase of e-bike interest on their website in April compared to January.

They used Komoot, an outdoor navigation and route planning app with over 35 million global users, to analyse the number of 'bike tours' (i.e. city-based routes for leisure cycling, excluding mountain biking or commuting routes) set at easy and intermediate level (i.e. no 'expert' routes were included in the research) within a 3-5 mile radius of the city (depending on the size of the city).

Over 32,000 biking tour routes were analysed to rank the top 15 cities in the UK for leisurely bike riding routes.

Overall, Bristol ranked first with 784 easy/intermediate bike riding routes followed by Liverpool and Newcastle-upon-Tyne with 727 and 646 routes, respectively.

The study also looked at which global cities offered the most relaxing bike ride routes. Brussels, Amsterdam and Frankfurt dominating the ranking with 930, 921 and 917 rides respectively. Bristol secured the 9th spot globally.