Join me if you will on a journey around Holes Bay..

As the beaches get busier and (quite rightly) cycling along the prom is banned from 10am to 6pm for the next two crazy months, it falls to intrepid explorers and me to go find new stuff.

Holes Bay is beautiful weird - rumoured to be polluted with heavy metals and ringed by a dual carriageway with some business yards chucked in for good measure you'd think it would be attractive as a Saturday night out in Lewisham and I set out to prove exactly that.

My journey started at my place as I'm still allowed to live there, through Whitecliff and Baiter parks then Poole Quay to turn right at the new lifeboat station (left would take you in to Sunseekers) and up towards the train station. There's a Costa there as reference.

The Recreational Path starts like this :



but very quickly gets more interesting with a mix of gravel, boardwalk and field tracks





with some very pretty views



There's an option to turn right for Upton Country park..



..and plenty of ways to get diverted but eventually you pop out at Cobb's Quay, where I watched a remote control boat launcher



and found the most excellent fifty footer - would you let your daughter board this?



After Cobb's you can choose to drop back down onto the bay side footpath but it gets very narrow in places - I had to walk behind my bike for sections - fortunately it knew where to go



..and you get rewarded with some idyllic little vignettes of ocean meeting countryside



Many of the residents had their own hovercraft moorings..



And then, all of a sudden, you pop out in Lower Hamworthy by the bridge back into Poole Quay.

It's a really enjoyable hour's ride and I found myself smiling quite a lot - I think the proximity of urban industrialism makes the green parts the more pretty.

Well worth it