The Best Cycling Towns Nobody's Heard Of

When I wrote about Cambridge being voted the best cycling city in the world, one reply stuck with me. Marco, who lives in Germany, asked whether these lists ought to take into account how big a place is. "Otherwise my 7000 souls village in the Black Forest might be a potential winner."

He has a point. According to the UN, more than half the world's population lives outside cities, in towns, villages and the countryside. Yet the cycling league tables are always the same handful of capitals: Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Paris. Nobody writes about the market town where everybody rides to the chip shop.

So I asked readers of the Velorution Journal for the best small town or village they'd ever ridden a bike in. Not sporty rides through the mountains. Somewhere you could get from A to B without any jeopardy, and leave your bike outside without worrying whether it would still be there when you came back.

Here's what you sent me.

First, the one Marco was talking about

Wettringen, Münsterland. Photo: Elelicht, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Every two years, Germany's national cycling club, the ADFC, runs the Fahrradklima-Test, a huge survey asking people how good their town is for riding a bike. In the 2024 edition, the best grade in the entire country, 1.55, didn't go to Berlin, Munich or Münster. It went to Wettringen, a small municipality in the Münsterland with fewer than 9,000 residents.

It was the third test in a row that Wettringen had topped the under-20,000 category, and it improved on the 2.0 it scored in 2022. Small places can win, and in Germany they keep winning.

Innerleithen, Scottish Borders

The Tweed Valley path just west of Innerleithen. Photo: Jim Barton, Geograph Britain and Ireland, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

This is the one that made me want to pack a bag.

Innerleithen is a town of about 3,150 people in the Tweed Valley, and most cyclists know it for mountain biking. Tracey rates it for something else entirely:

"It's the only place I've ever been to where everyone goes to the Co-op or the Chinese takeaway on their bikes. Plastic bags hanging off the handlebars, cycling down the main road, and cars respect them and give them space."

The buses take bikes, she says, so kids come out of school, put their bikes on the bus and ride home from the stop at the other end. The Tweed Valley Railway Path, which follows an old railway line through Cardrona between Peebles and Innerleithen and has since been extended to Walkerburn, works as a proper community resource. Kids ride it to the pump track at Cardrona. Parents take toddlers along it on balance bikes.

The bit I keep coming back to is this. Innerleithen's high street is also the main road linking the towns and villages of the valley, which on paper should make it a miserable place to ride. Tracey says it isn't, because there are simply so many people on bikes that "the weight of bikes makes it really safe."

Planners call it safety in numbers.

Germersheim, Germany

Ludwigstraße, Germersheim. Photo: P170, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Derek spent a few days in Germersheim, a town of around 21,500 people on the Rhine in Rhineland-Palatinate. He'd been weighing it up against Cambridge, and Germersheim won on how easy it was to get about from where he was staying.

His list of reasons: wide cycle paths, drivers giving way to people on bikes at roundabouts, and "Spezi, of course" (the German cola-and-orange drink). "Not the sort of things that pass for 'ease of cycling' in the UK."

I lived in Karlsruhe for a while, which isn't far away, and he's right. That whole corner of Germany is easy on a bike.

Île de Ré, France

Les Portes-en-Ré, at the western tip of the island. Photo: Jean-Pierre Bazard, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Tim's nomination isn't a town at all. "It's not a village but a whole little ecosystem," he wrote: the Île de Ré, off La Rochelle on France's Atlantic coast, which he calls "amazing for navigating on bikes."

The island has been joined to the mainland by a road bridge of nearly 3 km since the late 1980s. It has around 17,600 permanent residents and far more in summer, and it is crossed by a network of cycle paths that runs to roughly 100 km, depending on who's counting and whether you include the quieter tracks through the salt marshes and vineyards. It's flat and the villages are close together.

Uzès, France

Place aux Herbes, Uzès: the coffee stop at the top of the climb. Photo: Daniel Villafruela, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Ed lives near Uzès, a medieval town of around 8,500 people in the Gard, inland from Nîmes. He's honest about it: "Not super flat but worth the climb into the beautiful medieval town for a coffee."

If you go, there's a greenway to make a day of it. The Voie Verte du Pont du Gard runs about 33 km from Beaucaire to Uzès, past the Roman aqueduct at the Pont du Gard, with roughly half of it on dedicated, car-free path.

The New Forest, Hampshire

Hire bikes in Burley, on Rob's loop. Photo: John M, Geograph Britain and Ireland, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Rob grew up in the New Forest. He admits there aren't many towns there worth a whole ride on their own, so his nomination is a loop: from Ringwood to Burley to Brockenhurst, then back via the Ornamental Drive and Moyles Court. "Just mind the ponies!"

He means it. The Forest has more than 100 miles of waymarked cycle routes, most of them traffic-free, and thousands of free-roaming ponies, cattle and donkeys owned by local commoners and free to wander, roads included. One rule worth knowing before you go: off-road cycling in the New Forest is only allowed on the waymarked network, marked by numbered wooden posts.

Honourable mentions

A few nominations are a bit too big for the small-town category, but they're well worth a mention anyway.

Norwich

Covered bike parking at Norwich station. Photo: Joe Stafford.

Joe lives in Manchester and stayed in Norwich a few years ago. He rented "proper Dutch bikes, which are 1000% better than the awful ones we have at home" from the station, and found the city centre "a breeze to get around by bike", the suburbs too.

What struck him most were the details: safe bike parking everywhere, including at the station, and side roads where the pavement carries on across the junction, so drivers have to give way to people walking. "Something sorely lacking in 99.9% of places in England."

A continuous pavement across a side road: walkers keep their level, drivers give way. Photo: Joe Stafford.

On a hired bike in Norwich. Photo: Joe Stafford.

Norwich has been at this longer than most. It has a network of radial and orbital routes it calls the Pedalways, around 95 km of them in the city's 2015 plans, and a Beryl bike share scheme since 2020. And it was in Norwich, in 1967, that London Street became the first existing shopping street in Britain to be closed to traffic. I wrote about how the shopkeepers there changed their minds.

Joe's verdict: "If it wasn't so far away from everything, we would have moved there. It's my favourite English city by a country mile."

Milton Keynes

A family ride on National Cycle Route 6 at Walton, Milton Keynes. Photo: Steve Daniels, Geograph Britain and Ireland, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

"It's not a town these days, nor is it unknown," Tom wrote, "but I feel like much-maligned Milton Keynes' 200-mile network of fully-segregated, shared-use Redways deserves more love."

He has a case. The Redways were built alongside the new city from the 1970s, and now run to over 200 miles of traffic-free paths, separate from the grid roads. Milton Keynes gets laughed at for its roundabouts, but the Redways mean you rarely have to ride round one.

Boise, Idaho

Marcus's e-bike on his morning commute in Boise. Photo: Marcus Batson.

Marcus lived in Boise, a city of around 236,000, for four years, and in that time rode more than 10,000 miles on his e-bike. Most of those were on a six-mile commute. His family got by with one car, "without feeling like I couldn't cycle where I wanted to in town."

The spine of it is the Boise River Greenbelt, a tree-lined path the city describes as running 29 miles along both banks of the river, and which turned 50 in 2019. Marcus is honest that some parts of town are less pleasant to ride, but downtown makes up for them.

A cleared crossing on a December morning. Marcus rode all year round. Photo: Marcus Batson.

My favourite line in any reply: "More than once my coworkers would comment on how happy I seemed cycling throughout the year." He's since moved, so that his wife could find somewhere she loves as much as he loved Boise.

Oulu, Finland

Just after midnight in July, on a cycle path in Oulu. Photo: Tomas Kogan.

Tomas sent a photo of a summer evening ride with his wife, taken a few minutes after midnight in July, when there are only a few hours of something like darkness. Oulu sits on the Gulf of Bothnia, a little south of the Arctic Circle, and he's used to the weather.

Oulu is famous in cycling circles for the opposite season. The city maintains over 900 km of walking and cycling paths, and keeps them ridable through the winter. According to an AFP report in 2022, around a fifth of all journeys there are made by bike, and the main cycle routes are cleared of snow before the roads. The BBC has called it the winter cycling capital of the world. Tomas says the infrastructure is at its most enjoyable in summer.

Singapore

Neil's Schindelhauer at Marina Bay. Photo: Neil MacRae.

Neil's pick is a whole city state, and he knows it. "For all its density of population, Singapore is far and away my favourite location to cycle in."

His reason is the network. Singapore had about 440 km of cycling paths in 2020, and its Land Transport Authority is building towards around 1,300 km by 2030, on top of a park connector network that links the island's green spaces. Neil reckons you can now cycle safely around the whole island. His favourites are the 11 km Marina Bay loop, past the Helix Bridge, Gardens by the Bay and the Marina Barrage, and the East Coast Park path out towards Changi.

Sunset in East Coast Park. Photo: Neil MacRae.

What the good ones have in common

Read all these replies together and the same things keep coming up. None of them is about cycling as sport.

• Ordinary people riding for ordinary reasons. The takeaway, the Co-op, the commute, the school bus. Tracey's "weight of bikes" is the whole thing in four words.
• Somewhere to leave the bike. Joe noticed the parking before anything else.
• Drivers who give way. Derek's roundabouts, Joe's continuous pavements. Small design choices that tell a driver who comes first.
• Routes that join things up. An old railway line between villages, a greenway to an aqueduct, a path along a river. Not a painted line that stops at the scary junction.
• Size matters less than you'd think. Wettringen and Innerleithen show a small place can be brilliant. Milton Keynes and Singapore show a big one can be too, if it's built for it.

Is your town missing?

This list is going to grow. If you know a little-known town or village that's a joy to ride, leave a comment below: the place, and what makes it good on a bike.

And if you'd like more stories from people who ride everyday bikes, there are plenty in 29 Rides That Show Any Bike Will Do and Your Velorution Stories.

Sources

• Photos: readers' own, credited under each image and used with thanks; others from Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons licences linked in each caption. The featured image is Cyclistes aux Portes-en-Ré by Jean-Pierre Bazard, CC BY-SA 3.0.
• Reader nominations sent to the Velorution Journal, 22–23 October 2026: Tracey (Innerleithen), Derek (Germersheim), Tim (Île de Ré), Ed (Uzès), Rob (New Forest), Joe (Norwich), Tom (Milton Keynes), Marcus (Boise), Tomas (Oulu), Neil (Singapore).
• UN DESA, World Urbanization Prospects 2025: cities ~45%, towns ~36%, rural areas ~19% of the world's population.
• ADFC Fahrradklima-Test 2024 results: Wettringen first in the under-20,000 class with grade 1.55, the best of any municipality; 2.0 in 2022. fkt.adfc.de; Wettringen (Münsterland).
• Scottish Borders Council, Tweeddale area profile: Innerleithen population 3,152 (2022 census). Border Telegraph: Tweed Valley Railway Path extended to Walkerburn.
• Germersheim: population 21,532 (31 Dec 2025).
• Île de Ré: bridge, population. AF3V and local tourism sources for cycle path length (figures vary between about 80 and 130 km).
• Tourisme Gard, Voie Verte du Pont du Gard: Beaucaire to Uzès, 32.77 km. Uzès population 8,519 (INSEE 2023).
• Forestry England, Cycling the New Forest: 100+ miles of waymarked routes; off-road cycling on the waymarked network only.
• Cycling Industry News: Beryl bike share in Norwich, 2020. Norwich City Council Cycle City Ambition bid (2015): Pedalways network, ~95 km.
• Get Around MK, Redways: over 200 miles of shared-use paths.
• City of Boise, Boise Greenbelt: 29-mile pathway; 50 years in 2019.
• City of Oulu, street maintenance: over 900 km of pedestrian and cycle paths. AFP (December 2022), via Aaj News: a fifth of journeys by bike, main cycle routes ploughed before roads. BBC Future, December 2023.
• Land Transport Authority, March 2020: 440 km of cycling paths, 1,320 km by 2030; LTA, October 2025: around 1,300 km by 2030.