best way to route plan

turbo_hamster

I want to ride from the Midlands to see my folks in North Wales.

Is there a good place (website or set of maps or something) to get help with route planning?

For shorter trips, the Explorer maps would be my first choice.

MichaelW

I would use a road atlas for that.
My usual method is to figure out the best approach to the destination.
Look for any pinch points along the route (bridges, motorways crossings , big hills/valleys etc).
Look for any places to avoid (eg big towns/cities)
Look for any good sections of route (canal towpaths/minor roads/sustrans routes etc)

Figure out some intermediate waypoints (eg villages) and generally make up the precise route between waypoints as I go along, just like for local rides.

jc4lab

http://www.bikely.com/
try this..

andymiller

Try checking out the National Cycle Network on the Sustran's website. My general advice would be that if you avoid A roads, and B roads if you can, you won't go very far wrong.

Anonymous

www.bikeroutetoaster.com

turbo_hamster

Thanks very much all of you.

Useful advice, will try everything!

andrew@snowrace

Hi I trend to get a map which shows the whole route draw a straight line between start and finish points. Then on a very large scale maps plot the route as close to the line as possible. We just used this method to go from St Malo to Spain and it worked a treat (we had 18 A4 sheets showing the route about 2 a day and only got missplace twice both times by a couple km easy to get back on track) we also had a list of all the villages the route passed through which helped things up at junctions. hope this helps.

mzm70

http://www.viamichelin.co.uk/

On the left hand side there is the Departure and Destination fields, under that is an option to select Car, Motorbike, Cycle and Foot

priory

avoiding hills is aprt of the planning job for a trip into wales and the only way to do that with a planner that I know is bikely. Unfortunately biikely is really klunky at present, and does not do the route as easily as google, so I do it first on google maps as a walking route, adjust to find nicer roads, then check for unnecessary hills on bikely. Then I usually rip out a bit of old road atlas, highlight and laminate.
Sustrans is worth a look because sometimes you might find a nice off road bit if you have the tyres for it.