Six out of ten for the city stretch of the Swan River loop on a Saturday morning, eight out of ten for the Guildford run on pretty much any day. That's the short version, and I'll back it up, but the two rides get lumped together constantly as if they're the same experience with different scenery. They're not. One is a shared path clogged with prams, e-scooters and the odd confused tourist on a hire bike. The other is a quieter stretch of river where you can actually hold a line and a cadence without braking every ninety seconds.
I rode both again last weekend, city loop on the Friday afternoon on the gravel bike, Guildford stretch on the Sunday with two mates from the usual bunch. Different bikes for different jobs, which is part of the point here.
The city loop: crowded but convenient
The classic version runs along Riverside Drive through East Perth, around past the Causeway, down through South Perth foreshore and back. It's sealed the whole way, mostly flat, and it's the ride every visiting cousin gets taken on because it ticks off the skyline shot from the Mends Street jetty. Fair enough — it is a good photo. But as a ride, the surface quality is let down by foot traffic density, not by the path itself.
On a weekday before 7am it's genuinely good. Smooth bitumen, wide enough for two riders abreast without clipping a pedestrian, and the gradient is basically nil the whole way round. By 10am on a weekend it turns into a slalom course. Walkers three abreast, dogs on long leads, kids on balance bikes weaving without warning. You'll spend more energy braking and swerving than pedalling, and your average speed drops to something embarrassing for the effort you're putting in.
If you want the full sealed stretch of this, the Riverside Drive PSP is the backbone of it, and it connects reasonably well if you want to extend further down toward Mosman Park and Fremantle — which is covered properly in Ride around the Rivers Ride 4 - Mosman Park to Fremantle. That downstream extension is worth doing in its own right, separate to the inner loop, and it's less congested than the CBD-facing section.
The reputation doesn't quite match the surface
Here's my one real gripe with the city loop's reputation. It gets talked up as the Swan River loop, full stop, as if there's no alternative worth mentioning. I reckon that's mostly tourism marketing and proximity to the city rather than the ride actually being the best option on offer. It's convenient if you're staying in the CBD and dont have a car. It's not necessarily the best riding on the river, and treating it as the default does a disservice to the quieter options further upstream.
For visitors who just want the guided, no-navigation version of this stretch, there's the Swan River Bridges and City Segway Tour in Perth, which covers a lot of the same ground without you needing to think about traffic or turn-offs. And if the plan is a broader day trip rather than a dedicated ride, the City Tour Perth and Fremantle and Rottnest Island and Swan River bundles the river section into a wider itinerary, which makes sense if cycling isn't the main event of your trip.
The Guildford stretch: same river, different mood
Head upstream instead, out past Bayswater and across the Garratt Road Bridge toward Guildford, and the whole character of the ride changes. Less path width in places, sure, and there are a few gravel patches near the riverbank sections where the council hasn't resealed in a while — drop your tyre pressure a touch if you're on anything narrower than 28mm, because the joins in the path get a bit lumpy through there. But the traffic, both pedestrian and bike, drops off dramatically once you're past Maylands.
Guildford itself is worth the stop. The Rose and Crown Hotel on Swan Street has been there since the 1840s and it's as good a reason as any to roll in, lock up and have a coffee before heading back. The path surface through this stretch favours a gravel bike or a solid hybrid over a pure road setup — there's enough unsealed camber and tree root heave that a skinny tyre at high pressure will rattle your fillings loose.
This is, in my view, flat out the pick if you're after an actual ride rather than a photo-stop crawl. Fewer obstacles, more rhythm, and the river still looks the part without the foreshore crowds photobombing every second.
Pushing on toward Whiteman Park
If you've got legs left after Guildford, the path network keeps going and links you toward Whiteman Park, which makes a solid turnaround point or lunch stop depending on how far you want to push it. It's not technically part of the river loop anymore once you're off the Swan proper, but it's the natural extension for anyone treating the Guildford stretch as a half-day rather than a quick loop.
For riders wanting something more serious than a shared path day out, this general direction is also roughly where you start picking up connections toward the Munda Biddi Trail Foundation network out through the hills. That's a different category of riding entirely — proper off-road mountain bike trail, not a shared path — but it's worth knowing the Guildford stretch isn't a dead end if you're building toward something bigger later in the year.
Tyres, bikes and what actually matters
For the city loop, a road bike or a hybrid with anything from 25 to 32mm tyres is fine, the surface is sealed and consistent. For the Guildford stretch I'd run closer to 35mm minimum, lower pressure, and I wouldn't bother taking the carbon road bike out there unless you enjoy a jarring ride and the risk of a pinch flat on a root crossing. The e-bike I borrowed a few months back handled both fine, though on the city loop the extra weight is more of a liability in the pedestrian crush than a help.
Neither stretch has meaningful elevation to speak of, this is Perth, not the hills. The difference is entirely about surface consistency and how many other people you're sharing the path with at any given time.
If neither loop quite fits
If you've done both of these and want a third option with even less foot traffic, it's worth reading up on the Canning River path: Perth's quieter riverside ride worth doing, which runs off the Swan's southern tributary and gets a fraction of the attention either Swan River stretch does. It's not technically the same river loop, but if what you're actually chasing is a quiet ride on water rather than the specific postcode, it belongs in the same conversation.
So that's the comparison as it actually plays out on the ground, not as the brochures describe it. The city loop is convenient and occasionally frustrating. The Guildford stretch takes a bit more planning and a slightly tougher tyre setup, but it rewards you with an actual ride instead of a crowd-dodging exercise. Pick based on what you're actually after that day, not which one's closer to the hotel.