London to Frome route plan - help!

celery101

I live in London and am heading to Frome for the weekend to stay with friends.

Rather than miss my long weekend ride I'd like to head down on my bike (I'm getting a lift home). It's a long way, but I think my legs/lungs can take it.

This may be a stupid question, but what's the best way to plan the route given I don't know the roads? Using Google Maps and various online planners are fine if travelling by car - but even tweaking those searches so that motorways are avoided leaves me on loads of dual carriageways etc, which isn't my idea of fun.

Appreciate this might be a dumb question - but any advice on online resources I can use - or betterstill on suggested routes - would be gratefully received.

forgotrafe

I've planned several 200 mile rides through UK, Ireland & northern Europe. Only once have I had the luxury of doing a recce by car beforehand.

Some of the rides I've had to plan were for mass groups and for those I had to stick to reasonably big roads, limit number of turns etc. However it gets much more fun when I plan for just me as I ride with a GPS (Garmin Edge). This means I can put a pre-planned route on it and just follow the line on the screen. Don't have to worry about ease of navigating and so can pick some great routes. Much less stressful too.

This is my method for planning a route...

First I draw a straight-line on a map between the start & end points or use Google maps in walking mode to get a basic idea.

Then I go onto RideWithGPS and start drawing the route. If it's for me, then I use all the little roads.

Note that Google maps (which is what RideWithGPS uses) have a habit of showing byways & private roads the same as normal roads. On one occasion I had to walk 2 miles down a byway in my carbon soled shoes as it was unrideable on 23C tyres! On another I had to find my way round an industrial estate that Google thought I could go straight through. And on another I found myself in the middle of the Fens with no public roads around me! Interestingly it's never gone wrong abroad!

So if it's a UK ride I now use two tricks to reduce the chances of this...

1) use the satellite view to double check things.

2) export the route as a GPX file and load that into Memory Map to view the route on an OS map.

I use Memory Map because I own it & RideWithGPS because I like it - but there are plenty of free online route planners out there including some that mix OS & Google maps.

Hope that helps!

celery101

Good stuff - cheers - will get planning!

jumbosausage

Celery, I've done it on a London to Cornwall.
I started from Liverpool St but next time I'll get the train to Windsor, the ride prior to that point is not really up to much.
Route as follows;
Windsor (Great Windsor Park is espesh nice if you can incorporate that), Littlefield green, Reading, A4 to Hungerford (I originally tried it on the Kennet & Avon canal which I found to slow and would be hopeless on 23c road tyres. So ended up on the A4 which is nowhere near as bad as it sounds),Grafton, Pewsey, Upavon, Urchfont, Westbury and on to Frome. Bobs your uncle.

Good Luck

JS

celery101

Very, very useful - cheers Jumbo. Will amend plans accordingly. Setting off tmrw at 8 am. Fingers X'd!

craker

Have you got a GPS? I did Newbury to Chepstow last year and forgotrafe has the right idea in my opinion.

The alternative to GPS is lots of maps which is hard work. I remember coming out of London a while ago making it up by map and roadsign - road signs tend to send you onto bigger and bigger roads; you'll get there but it might not be the nicest route.