Cape Cod is heaven for those who prefer to pedal. With gas in the neighborhood of $3 a gallon, biking is not only fun and great exercise, it makes sense. Just park your car, then bike where you want to go.

It’s easier to list the places on the Cape that aren’t good for biking than those that are: in the water or on wet sand, and routes 6 and 28 on busy days. Other than that, every back road, woodland path and bike trail is fair game.

Back-road biking is the best way to see the sights on both the Cape and the Islands. This isn’t high-speed cranking and there aren’t difficult hills, so you don’t need a fancy bike or lots of stamina. It’s perfect for old- timers on old bikes, families with young children on brand-new bikes, and everyone in between.

You can also pedal more than 100 miles of bike or “recreation” paths on Cape Cod. You’ll have to share with walkers, joggers and in-line skaters, even the occasional unicycle — but no cars.

As you cross onto the Cape, try the seven-mile paths on either side of the Cape Cod Canal. At the other end, there’s a paved five-mile loop on the Province Lands in Provincetown. In between are a host of bike paths, including two beauties on the Cape Cod National Seashore at Head of the Meadows in Truro and at the Salt Pond Visitor Center in Eastham.

Most famous, of course, is Cape Cod Rail Trail. Two new bridges over Route 6 have cut off a long road section around Orleans and Rock Harbor, shortening the journey from the former 25 or 26 miles — the maps never agreed — to 22 miles.

If you want to see a different side of Cape biking, try the dune biking around P-town and the off-road mountain biking around the “kettle ponds” within the National Seashore in Wellfleet.

If you have some time and a good map, you can explore on your own. Lacking those, Cape Outback Adventures (800-864-0070; www.capeoutback.com) offers a $45-per-person guided mountain-biking tour of the kettle ponds.