Singapore does have some pretty nice green spaces. And from the looks of it, more foreigners seemed to be enjoying those spaces than locals. Not that I begrudge said foreigners their leisure... but it felt weird to me that as a citizen and taxpayer, I wasn't getting nearly as much out of all this as they were.
Time to rectify that!
Stop going out of the country on break. There's plenty to discover on this island. It was high time I coded less on weekends and explored more.During the tail end of 2025, I began my exploration. In particular, a colleague of mine pointed me to the Coast-to-Coast Trail, a cycling/hiking route that starts from Jurong Lake Gardens and ends at Rower's Bay Park.
From what I managed to Google of the task, it seemed to be too big an undertaking to take on without seeking some guidance. To that end, I sought out the help of an ex-Navy buddy, who also happened to be an avid cyclist. He was familiar with the route and even knew what signs to look out for, such as the one shown below. Honestly, I'd never have figured that one out by myself. All I actually had was this map.
I met him at Lakeside MRT Station at 7AM on a Saturday. He had his own bike while I used an Anywheel rental. It had just stopped raining and the ground was wet. He had a helmet, padded tights and gloves. I had... slippers and pluck. And we set off, going through Jurong Lake Gardens and ended up at the signpost for Checkpoint One.
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| Checkpoint One. |
The surroundings were pretty lovely. I was going to have to explore this another time, but for now, I was squarely focused on the Coast-to-Coast Trail.
My buddy took me on what felt like a bicycle trek through an urban landscape. This felt like a bit of a mood whiplash after the lush idyllic environment of Jurong Lake Gardens.
The bicycle paths were built pretty close to the road on this portion of the trail. Basically this was a common feature of bicycle paths that had been retrofitted into urban infrastructure, which struck me as an uncomfortable but necessary compromise. At one point, the trail led right under an MRT track!
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| Right under an MRT track. |
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| Up a zigzag ramp bridge... |
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| ...and over the Pan Island Expressway |
This led straight to a ramp bridge which took us over the Pan Island Expressway eventually led us to a canal behind Bukit Batok Industrial Estate.
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| Behind an industrial estate. |
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| This bike ramp. |
At the end of it, we crossed a traffic junction and rolled the bike down a solid, if not totally friendly, bike ramp.
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| Zodiac statues. |
There were some pretty amazing visuals on the way, such as this Animal Zodiac display.
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| Checkpoint Two. |
From there, we arrived at Bukit Batok Nature Park. And just like that, we were at Checkpoint Two. Now, that was a fun, if short, ride away from the bustle of the main road.
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| Riding through Bukit Batok Nature Park. |
It was here my buddy observed that I seemed almost oblivious to the uphill inclines he was pointing out even though my Anywheel bike had no gears. My habit of swimming almost daily certainly contributed to my cardiovascular conditioning. My bike technique, however, was woeful. I was wobbling way too much, even with the wet road as an excuse.
Then we turned in to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. It was another fun ride along Upper Bukit Timah Road, and soon we arrived at Checkpoint Three.
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| Checkpoint Three. |
Downhill from there, we passed the Rifle Range Park to Bukit Timah Road. The ride downhill was exhilirating.... and then the fun abruptly stopped because we were staring at a long stretch of road ahead. Not a proper bicycle path, but a narrow one right by the bustling road.
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| A long unpleasant ride ahead. |
It would have been a long an uneventful ride, but for one thing - I took a spill over the slick path and skinned both knees. My buddy was right - my technique was woeful. And my eventual fall along Bukit Timah Road felt inevitable. Honestly, I was lucky. A meter to the left and I might have been squashed by oncoming traffic. Still, I got back up, back on the bike, and we continued all the way to Adam Road Food Center where the next Checkpoint was.
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| Checkpoint Four. |
And that was it for this episode. We got this far in a couple hours, not that we were speeding or anything.
Thoughts so far
Singapore's generally neat and well-organized. A lot of thought has been given to the issue to safety for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists co-existing on Singapore's paths. The result is a largely safe, if restrictive experience.
Going through the first few checkpoints of the Coast-to-Coast Trail felt like traversing through a legacy codebase that has seen several updates from several different development teams with very different approaches... which somehow still works as intended. Probably because users use it as intended.
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