Six out of ten on crowd levels, eight out of ten on surface, and thats about as good as a weekday balance gets on any Perth shared path. The Canning River path doesn't get the postcard treatment the Swan foreshore does, and honestly that's the whole selling point. Fewer prams, fewer e-scooters weaving at you blind, and long stretches where you can actually hold a line without checking over your shoulder every ninety seconds.
I rode most of it again last weekend on the gravel bike, partly to check a resurfaced section near Beckenham and partly because I wanted an excuse to skip the Sunday bunch and go solo for once. The path runs from around Kent Street Weir down through Wilson, Riverton and Shelley before it starts talking to the Swan near Applecross. It's not one continuous ribbon of perfect asphalt — there are joins, there are gravel patches near the wetlands boardwalks, and there's one stretch past the Nicholson Road Bridge that still floods after decent rain and turns to slop. Check conditions if it's been wet.
Surface and gradient - what your tyres actually feel
Most of the path is sealed dual-use, wide enough for two bikes to pass a pedestrian without anyone bailing onto the grass. Gradient is basically nothing, which is the point of a river path, but there are a handful of ramps up to road-bridge crossings that'll wake your legs up if you've been coasting. Kent Street Weir has a short pinch that catches people out because it comes after a long flat stretch where you've stopped paying attention.
For tyre pressure, I run the gravel bike around 45-50 psi on the sealed sections and drop it slightly, maybe 5 psi, when I know I'm hitting the boardwalk gravel near the wetlands. Road bike riders on 25s will feel every gravel patch and every tree-root heave in the path near Shelley — it's not rough enough to need a hybrid, but if you're on skinny tyres and low pressure you'll be picking a line more than you'd like. A hybrid or gravel bike is genuinely the sensible choice here over a road bike, not because the whole path demands it but because the unsealed 10-15% of it does.
Carousel to Southlands - the busier bookend
If you're starting from the northern end, the stretch covered in Canning Route 2: Carousel to Southlands is where you'll hit the most foot traffic — it runs past shopping centre carparks and school pickup zones, so treat it as the commuter-adjacent section rather than the scenic bit. It's fine, it's just not where the path earns its