Imagine a parallel universe where the Tour de France was obliged to keep strictly to dedicated cycle lanes. Here’s what that route would have looked like last Sunday, as the riders swept through Northfleet on their way to Canterbury.

The photograph above was taken three days before the Tour riders and their support crews hurtled through. It shows the official Sustrans National Cycle Network route from Northfleet to Gravesend town centre – a forbidding jungle of buddleia, broken glass and mud, virtually impenetrable. This is what the Tour cyclists would have had to confront, like a rather bad dream. Malville Rendezvous.

A network, like a bicycle chain, is only as strong as its weakest link, and here Route 1 threatens to break down entirely. As an early supporter of Sustrans, I still believe that John Grimshaw and his team have done a heroic job in creating the national network, and have spent memorable days in recent years cycling Sustrans routes in Essex, Suffolk, Dorset and Somerset, usually with friends. But the time has come to raise the game. This just isn’t good enough.

If people’s travel habits are to change, and they are to be encouraged to leave their cars at home while they set off on their bikes, or go walking, then they’ll need to feel safe and comfortable. In short, cycling and pedestrian routes now need to be given the same kind of planning and investment as that given to the car. A mile of motorway costs at least £28 million, and the proposals to widen the M1 are currently estimated at £3 billion. You could pave the entire Sustrans network in gold for that.

But it’s something else as well. The National Cycle Network is a marvellous achievement of planning and engineering, but it has yet to win the hearts and minds of most people, particularly those in the inner urban areas who rarely venture out into the countryside. Yet within a couple of miles of this grim tunnel are some magnificent marshlands and views of the Thames from open fields and promontories.

The urban gateways into the countryside should be where the network really hits the ground running, but at present if you want to cycle to Gravesend from Northfleet, then you are better advised to stick to the road. It’s safer.

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