North Sydney is a suburb just north of the harbour bridge. It consists of numerous high-rise buildings, the Pacific highway and is the outlet for the Harbour Bridge and the Tunnel traffic. It was never designed for bicycles and I have ridden through it and hated it. Recently Bike North, a advocacy group published a video of a newly opened cycle path that that started at St Leonards Park. It was time to go exploring.
St Leonards Park to Primrose Park
This is the best of the cycle paths around North Sydney. It starts at the corner of Ridge Rd and heads east across St Leonards Park, across the Gore Hill Freeway on a cycle bridge and down through Neutral Bay to Bennelong Rd. This is where the road bike trail to The Spit Bridge starts. Its 2.5km long and drops 30m.
You will find the path in purple here >>
Getting from the Bridge to the Epping Rd Cycleway
You will see numerous signs with bikes on them pointing to North Sydney and Neutral Bay as you ride around North Sydney. I haven’t included them on my maps as they end up in busy places and roads. The purpose of riding through North Sydney is to get to the bike trail that starts near the Long Gully bridge. I found that heading just west of North Sydney on Edward St and West St was the best solution. There are a couple of one way roads in the south and they are shown here in black >>
Here is the view from the start of the Epping Rd Cycle way to Long Gully Bridge and a picture of West St. Its four km to traverse this area and there is about 30m of climbing. And a rare photo of me in full cotton fake fluorescence.
Finally a map of the trail that I rode to collect this information. I had to ride it again another day to make up my mind what I wanted to say.
More Photos here and there is more information about the area in this page
Herbert St – St Leonards
A efficient on-road path from the Epping Rd Cycleway to St Leonards is Herbert st. It has been done well but not for the kiddies
This ride here uses photos and shows some of the more technical roads that riders use to get through North Sydney (and avoid a few hills)