Top 10 biking postcodes

Are you in one of Britain’s motorcycling hotspots?

EVER notice that some parts of the country seem to have a higher concentration of bikes than others? Does your area have a raging motorcycling culture or is it a barren wasteland of four-wheeled monotony?

It turns out that bikes aren’t spread as evenly around the country as you might expect but it's not all concentrated in London, either. Some areas have disproportionately large motorcycle populations, whether it’s because they’re inner-cities where scooters are popular or rural landscapes with perfect motorcycling roads. There are also areas which are popular and we can't quite work out why. Maybe you can help.

For this top ten we’re naming the ten postcode areas with the highest motorcycle populations from a total of 3,064 postcode districts. Obviously the square-mile size of each postcode differs but then so does the population density.

Based on DfT data, these are the ten postcodes with the highest number of registered motorcycles, starting at number ten..

10. PR9

1,799 motorcycles and scooters

IF you were expecting the most populous motorcycle postcodes to simply reflect the most highly-populated parts of the country (ie, they’d all be in London) then this one might come as a surprise. In case PR9 isn’t familiar, it’s in the area of Southport, just south of Blackpool, and it’s got a seriously high proportion of bikes, with 1799 registered there compared to 19,727 cars. That ratio, nearly 1 in 10, is far higher than the national average. As to why? Frankly, we’re stumped. Presumably you Southport inhabitants just love two wheels or maybe the weather's always better up there?

9: LE9

1,804 motorcycles and scooters

WE might not be able to pinpoint Southport’s popularity with bikers (or is it the other way around) but LE9 makes sense, as it’s home to Mallory Park and within a stone’s throw of the Triumph factory in Hinckley. While the overall bike number is high, the bike-to-car ratio isn’t as impressive as PR9, since while there are only five more motorcycles in LE9, the area is home to more than 10,000 extra cars, with a total of 30,532. So secretly, you love your cars here too. Encourage your neighbout to get on two wheels!

8: LE12

1,836 motorcycles and scooters

DESPITE its proximity to a race track and Britain’s main bike factory, LE9 isn’t Leicestershire’s leading bike area. In fact it’s only third in the county. Second goes to LE12, a mainly rural area surrounding Loughborough. Again it can’t match PR9’s bike-to-car ratio, or even that of LE9, with some 33,714 cars for just 1836 bikes. It’s a big area, though, and one with some pretty decent biking roads, which probably explains why so many riders live there.

7: NW10

1,867 motorcycles and scooters

YOU couldn’t find a part of the UK that was far more different to LE12’s rural setting than our next contender, London’s NW10 postcode.  Sitting in the London Borough of Brent and backing on to Wembley, NW10 might seem like just another part of London, but its bike population is high at 1867. While admitting we haven’t done any counting, we’d guess that scooters make up a big chunk here, and the bike-to-car ratio is pretty impressive since there are only 25,014 cars in the same few square miles.

6: TQ12

1,931 motorcycles and scooters

FROM London we go all the way to the south west for our next choice, the Newton Abbot area near Torquay. Here it has got to be the excellent countryside and biking B-roads that account for the popularity of two-wheelers, although a full-on superbike might feel a little unwieldy on the narrow, pitted country lanes that make up most of the area’s tarmacked byways. Just the spot for a single-cylinder trailie or a supermoto, though. You TQ12ers are representing for the Deep South!

5: LE67

2,001 motorcycles and scooters

LEICESTERSHIRE is cementing itself as the biking county of the UK with its third entry in the chart, with LE67 sitting bang between the previous two LE postcodes and covering the Coalville area. Close enough to Hinckley and Mallory to be affected by both when it comes to motorcycle popularity, it’s also got a key combination of decent country roads and several towns and villages. We’d guess more than a handful of Triumph workers live in LE67. Having said that, it still doesn’t come close to PR9’s bike-to-car ratio – there are more than 30,000 cars for LE67’s 2000 bikes.

4: BS16

2,060 motorcycles and scooters

WE head out west again for our number four choice, Bristol’s BS16 area. This one is an anomaly, as there seems little rhyme or reason to its population of 2060 motorcycles. Most of the area is a Bristol suburb, fairly highly populated. But we’re going to stop there, as the same area’s number of cars seems impossibly high – according to the DfT figures there are around 80,000 cars registered in BS16. If that’s true, the high-ish number of bikes is still a relatively low proportion.

3: CR0

2,073 motorcycles and scooters

A SIMILAR number of bikes as BS16, but far fewer cars (around 50,000) means that Croyden’s CR0 postcode is a far more biker-friendly spot. Home to at least four motorcycle dealers, CR0’s position on the outskirts of London makes it an ideal motorcycle-commuter hotspot.

2: SW11

2,101 motorcycles and scooters

OWNING a car in SW11 (Battersea) is a pretty pointless proposition, and an impossible one for many with parking at a premium. Which probably explains why there are just 17,339 cars registered there compared to 2,101 bikes. It’s the first of our top 10 to beat the bike-to-car ratio of our number ten finisher, Southport. Scooters must be a big proportion of them, though.

1: SW6

2,236 motorcycles and scooters

NEXT door to number two finisher SW11, SW6 just edges it as the number one biking postcode in Britain. The bike-to-car ratio is similar (17,840 cars vs 2,236 bikes) and again it’s an area of street after street of terraced houses. You wouldn’t ride there for fun, but a bike is the perfect tool for actually cutting through the traffic and parking near your destination.

So it just shows that it's not all about commuters. Clearly good roads and open spaces encourage more people onto two wheels too.