Really enjoying the park connectors in Singapore lately on bicycle! In these two weeks, have done a 36 km route and two 15+km routes starting from home and here are some of the great views to take in on these routes ..
- Springleaf and Upper Seletar route – heading down the rather messy Ang Mo Kio Avenue 6 (full of construction work due to building of the North South Corridor) towards Yishun, and joining to Lentor Avenue, we reached the Springleaf Park connector. The access is via a ramp from near a bus stop (that seems to be call “Bef Sg Seletar Bridge”).
Its a very peaceful ride from here compared to what we experienced getting there (AMK Ave 6 and Lentor Ave are rather busy and noisy with traffic). At the end of this connector is the Springleaf nature park, a good place for bird watching apparently (no doubt helped by the dense foilage, as in photo above).
From Springleaf nature park, cross over Sembawang Road to end up at Mandai Road. Take a left turn to Mandai Road Track 7 to head to Upp Seletar Reservoir Park when you see an expressway near you (SLE).
This park is really scenic and you can even see part of the River Safari area when you look across the reservoir. The reservoir park is also well-known for this “rocket”:
2. Ang Mo Kio to Marina Bay and back (36km) – a much longer ride took me one Saturday morning towards Marina Bay. Most of it is on park connectors too, which was great! …but the “challenging part” is near St Andrew’s village, where you either need to carry your bike up a really tall overhead bridge that spans the Pan Island Expressway,
or navigate via traffic crossings to get to the Geylang East side to head towards the Kallang park connector.
From here, keep heading towards Kallang MRT station and towards the Sports Hub, then cross over to Tanjong Rhu side and soon, I was cycling along the path at Gardens by the Bay East looking at the flower dome and cloud forest conservatory, across the river.
The route then takes in the scenic area around the Marina Bay Sands area, and all around the bay …
For my journey back towards Ang Mo Kio, I went along the park connector that goes towards the F1 Pit area and Crawford Road. Took a break at the area near the North Bridge Road food centre. There are many places to eat, including the famous Tai Wah Bak Chor mee or the “kopi gu yu” coffee shop (both totally packed and with long queues on a Saturday morning), but plenty of other yummy food around, so I just went to a “random” coffee shop with seats available and no queue.
All in all, a satisfying 4 hr solo bike ride on a beautiful sunny Saturday morning!
3. Lornie Park Connector – this was just opened over the weekend and my neighbour (who is at NParks) met me one morning while heading off to work and stopped to tell me how pleased he was with it!
From home, we headed towards Bishan Park and went up Marymount Road. This was full of construction works due to the North South Corridor again, but there was a pavement that led all the way to Marymount MRT. We headed up further along Marymount Road (signages of the “Coast to Coast Trail” will show the way) to the underpass that brought us to St Theresa’s Home, near a path that leads to Macritchie Reservoir (MR). We rode along the pavement alongside the road that would eventually bring us to the other entrance (for cars) to MR, and a short while after, we were at the Lornie Park Connector.
The ride was much nicer from here, as the path was very wide for both pedestrians/runners and cyclists to share (with Macritchie Reservoir on one side all the way along this route). This stretch is slightly less than 2 km, and will be (kind of) familiar to those who have done the cross country road while in school (it is much nicer now though, with little road traffic and noise)!
but most of it is demarcated (for pedestrians and cyclists)
We headed up further to Kheam Hock Park before turning back..BUT do note that you will have to use an overhead bridge (ramps to guide your bike if you push it) to cross Lornie Highway, to get to the Kheam Hock side of things which will then bring you to the Botanic Gardens. We found that we needed to cycle on the road here as both sides are flanked by private housing which makes for a rather unsatisfying ride if we cycled on the pavement.
Cycling is really a great way to take in the various sights in Singapore ever since the PCN initiative was launched, and an environmentally friendly way to move about to get to all the wonderful places our city has to offer. Am really looking forward to more bike adventures in the days/months ahead!! 🙂
While I Live, I Learn 