Honestly, a friend told me a wonderful idea, which just makes me more disappointed in our governments lack of any real foresight:
They could’ve put a cycle path/walking path beside the HS2 rail line, would’ve been pretty darn useful for travelling large distances on bike. Even could’ve had camping grounds and analogues to motorway services at points along the route…
Canals are kind of a useful aspect for travelling around the country on bike as you can basically cover most of the country, but they aren’t wide enough/maintained enough to be truly viable.