Friday 29 April 2016

Why the routing takes so long

I thought it may be worthwhile to give you glimpse of our routing process.

It usually starts with me, working in Basecamp, creating a route from A to B, obviously avoiding motorways (illegal), and and stretches of A roads that look like they are cycle unfriendly.  I try and pick the most direct route, and will use bits of A road that don't look that great, if its going to add a lot of mileage to avoid them.

Next, the route goes across to Nick, in .gpx format, and he follows the route on Google's streetview, and makes adjustments for anything that he doesn't want to try and cycle down.  These adjustments are usually to avoid bits of A roads that are very cycle unfriendly, or little country lanes with so much grass growing up the middle that he feels he should push a lawnmower ahead of the bike.  He also sometimes tweaks the route into side roads in towns to avoid certain types of junctions.  While going through the route on streetview, Nick will also waypoint any laybys and car parks on the route that look good for stopping to replenish supplies, toilet breaks etc.

The route then comes back to me, as a Garmin Track with waypoints, and I adjust the routes on my Basecamp to match his.  I then add in all the waypoints I have for the area (CCC, CC, BritStops, WildCamping points etc ... everything I have that we can use for overnight).
The next step is a massive delete ... anything that is obviously more than 3km off route goes.  I then work my way along the route, measuring how far off route each stop is, duplicate and rename it with a number (consecutive for the route direction), and in the paper spreadsheet that we will both have with us, not the distance off route, what type of stop it is (what facilities are there if its a campsite ... of course I'm particularly interested in CDPs and taps).

I don't like having too big a gap between stops, because we have no idea where we will be spending the night, and I want to have stops that Nick can cycle to, even when he's tired at the end of a long day.  My worst nightmare would be having to get up at 4am with him and drive him to where he needs to start riding, because there hasn't been a convenient place to stop.

Usually, with a ride where we plan a set distance in advance, the nightly stops are prearranged between us, so there is very little planning on the fly to do be done, and we just have stopping points every 25km (1 hour riding), for potential breaks during the day.

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