FNRttC 2017 (that's next year, folks) thinking ride thread

You do want to come on this tour don't you?


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mmmmartin

Random geezer
Absurdly early I know, but read on and you'll see why this thread has been started now.

Here's the plan, subject to the democratic vote (see poll)

We cross from Plymouth to Roscoff on the night of:
  • Friday June 30 and wake up in Roscoff on the morning of
  • Saturday July 1 and do 70k to Brest (fairly hilly but a short day - the more energetic can dump the bags and go for a thrash after arrival the the hotel)
  • Sunday July 2 80k to Quimper (see Google maps for this route, pretty countryside)
  • Monday July 3 110k to Loudeac (empty small roads in France - a longer day)
  • Tuesday July 4 to St Malo (similar to yesterday although the entrance to St Malo is good riding)
here's the possible route for this section:
https://goo.gl/maps/LnLZvMtrpwu

  • Wednesday July 5 we ride to Mont St Michel where we spend an hour or two, it's very pretty.
    8432-1-the-mont-saint-michel-jeremie-eloy-wanaiifilms-com.jpg
after that we ride on to Avranches, making a short day of 70k along the coast. I've ridden this, its pretty, plus flat and empty roads with quite a bit of decent cycle path away from the roads.
  • Thursday July 6 75k to Saint Lo, French countryside, decent lunch in Villedieu-les-Poeles
  • Friday July 7 an easy 35k day - to Bayeux where we can have a look at the famous tapestry if you wish, there's plenty of time, and early finish and time for a decent lunch.
  • Saturday July 8 easy 45k day - first to the landing beach at Arromanches where the Mulberry harbour is still visible in the sea, and there is a very good museum - we'll spend an hour or two here. Some of you will have seen it but many will not have. Thence to the ferry port at Ouistreham and the night ferry back to Dear Old Blighty.
here's a link to a Google maps view of the route:
https://goo.gl/maps/YdcEsDWQsuq

You will probably want to do this route in good weather so you may opt to sign up for a Tour in July rather than the autumn. For a Tour in July the recce needs to be done and dusted and everything ironed out by end of April so you can then get weaving on the hotels and ferries nice and early. Hence the discussion now.
The poll refers to this, the French Tour.

Now here's another thought:
Would you also like a SECOND Tour? (Note the first idea will lways take priority.)
Here's an idea: The Checkpoint Charlie Tour
https://goo.gl/maps/ALKrREwxZL92
We cross Germany. From the German border into the heart of Berlin, and we have a whole day in Berlin to savour it.

This is bloody tricky Tour to organise but I reckon it'll be worth all the hassle because I've ridden a bit in Germany and thought it was great and the people I met were the icing on the cake - so here's the gist:
Overnight from Harwich to the Hoek, bikes in a van, us on the train to the German border. Bikes out of van, ride to Berlin, bikes go back in van to the Hoek and we go on the train back to the Hoek. It'll be in September, after the school holidays and this is northern Europe so it could be windy, cold and bloody wet. You will, of course, by September 2017 have forgotten that I wrote those words.
there - what could be simpler? and what could possibly go wrong?
We (sorry, I meant I ) need to find either a man-and-a-van or a coach company (Horseman Coaches in Reading will be getting a call but we'll probably use a Dutch or German one) to get us/and or bikes to the border and getting back will be another order of difficulty.
Now - here's the rub - numbers will be limited to those we can fit into the travel arrangements - we know we can fit 16 bikes into a coach luggage area. The Tour this year (2016) will have about 30, and getting 30 bikes and 30 riders around Europe is hard and expensive. So this won't be as cheap as nipping over to Calais for a few days. Some will be happy to fly, others won't.

If too many for the logistics want this then there will be an extremely democratic weeding out process decided entirely by me, based on nothing more than whimsy, bias, venality and sheer evil. OK?

Your thoughts, please.

Finally, anyone can comment, you don't need to be a member of The Fridays. (But if you own a bike and are not a member of The Fridays, you probably need therapy.)
Finally finally, please just don't produce the usual hallelujah chorus - the more critical, the better AFAIAC



Time to vote ........
 
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StuAff

Silencing his legs regularly
Location
Portsmouth
Oui, et Ja!
 
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mmmmartin

mmmmartin

Random geezer
the second is very much a second, the vote is for number one. i'll change it to reflect that. all comments re either/both welcome, as usual.
 

Fubar

Guru
Jeez, don't envy you organising this - 3 CC tours to Islay, Inverness and the Lakes and I've had it! Herding hedgehogs springs to mind. If I were to choose it would be option 1, (not that I think Mrs Fu would give me the relevant approvals) - I assume you get deposits etc up front to prevent the usual drops outs/mind changers/those who throw themselves off cliffs? What about variations in average speeds? Just a couple of thoughts. Whatever you decide I'd be inclined to stick with people you know and trust. All the best!
 

srw

It's a bit more complicated than that...
Here are some devil's advocate thoughts for what is basically a fantastic idea - the first one, that is. I'll think about the second one.

How do the riders get to Plymouth? It's over 3 hours from London on a train route which is unriendly for cyclists and which has at most one train per hour. It's a long way to drive. It's a Friday, which will be the busiest day of the week.

The week feels very uneven - first half lumpy and long days, second half much flatter and shorter days. And when you plot the whole thing the loop out to Brest and Quimper looks odd. The lumpiness is non-negligible all the way, both in Brittany and as you cross the Cotentin peninsula.

The stop at St-Malo is a neat idea, to break the ride into two halves - but is there going to be a ferry at the right time to let people do halve of the thing?
 
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mmmmartin

mmmmartin

Random geezer
How do the riders get to Plymouth?
Agreed, it's tricky.
Train. BUT no bikes allowed from London Paddington before 7pm and because it is GWR, bikes need to be booked on the train. This is the fly in the ointment. With 30 going on this year's Tour, there may be even more next year.
But we could run a coach from London, which we know will take 16 bikes and possibly 20, and this (probably won't be but could be shared with Reading CTC which may, or may not, do the route in reverse and as we step off the coach in Plymouth they step on to it at the end of their own tour from Caen to Roscoff, As per the system with Le Tourette.
But I'll be the first to admit this is an issue: trouble is, if we can't use Plymouth we are stuck for ever more with Cherbourg/Dieppe/Caen/Calais and we have done the areas around them to death in the past few years. It means we can never do Brittany. Perhaps we could do St Malo-Calais, but that's not Brittany, which is different.
 
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mmmmartin

mmmmartin

Random geezer
The stop at St-Malo is a neat idea, to break the ride into two halves - but is there going to be a ferry at the right time to let people do halve of the thing?
The returns from St Malo to Portsmouth are during the day so those doing only the first half would need to take a ferry on the next day, the Wednesday. I don't think many will go all that way to do just half the trip though.
the loop out to Brest and Quimper looks odd. The lumpiness is non-negligible all the way, both in Brittany and as you cross the Cotentin peninsula.
The loop is to spend a few days among Brittany scenery.

And yes, it's hilly. One suggestion after last year was to go back to the Netherlands and there was an idea to ride across the whole country from the Hoek north to the area around Groningen (which only @Gordon P can pronounce properly) but we felt we couldn't keep going back to somewhere just because it's easy to get to, cheap, the land is completely flat, the cycling is fantastic, the tarmac is perfect, there are safe segregated cycle lanes everywhere, the beer is cheap, the food is good, there are no language problems and we can stay cheaply with the friendly locals of the Vrienden op de Fiets. So I came up with the idea of France instead.
 

StuartG

slower but further
Location
SE London
@mmmmartin - if the GWR option of getting to Plymouth is challenging - is there a viable option of taking a shorter crossing and using the more cycle friendly SNCF to get us to Roscoff or wherever?
 

StuAff

Silencing his legs regularly
Location
Portsmouth
@mmmmartin - if the GWR option of getting to Plymouth is challenging - is there a viable option of taking a shorter crossing and using the more cycle friendly SNCF to get us to Roscoff or wherever?
Alternative- just had a Google- overnight Pompey-St Malo ferry, then trains to Morlaix (26km from Roscoff), via Rennes. Rennes-Morlaix is on the Paris-Brest line TGVs, but it does take a limited number of fully-assembled bikes (handily, Voyages SNCF have just tweaked their site so it can tell you when it's possible and costs).
Plymouth from here is about five hours and sixty quid...
 
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StuartG

slower but further
Location
SE London
It's definite.
That's a good thing
Is it? 'Cross Country' has possibly an even more restrictive cycle policy than GWR and Mancunians will have to combine two CC journeys (changing in Birmingham) of which each has this policy: "On most of our trains we have two reservable bike spaces and one further space for unreserved bikes."

So given only one service arrives in Plymouth at a reasonable time that could limit 'The North & Scotland' to a total of two riders if they book early enough unless a third wants to push their luck. Or you come via London ...
 

srw

It's a bit more complicated than that...
Other, non-public, methods of transport are available, but have other issues. One of the thoughts at the back of my mind is the possibility of parking at St-Malo and using trains to get to Morlaix or Roscoff and back from Caen.

@mmmmartin: one more thought. Again, hyper-critical, but that's what you wanted.

On closer inspection, the day that concerns me most in your proposal is Quimper - Loudeac. It's relentlessly uphill, and also the longest (though I see you haven't admitted how far Loudeac-St Malo is: you might want to add that info to your post). Take that day out, and it's a tour for touring bikes. With that day in it's a question of packing extremely light on a light bike. It's not a route that can be ducked out of using a train, because trains don't exist to Loudeac.

Given it's Brittany (which is a great idea) you're severely constrained by the small number of big towns, but are there any other towns with adequate accommodation not currently in use? Rather than Quimper and Loudeac would Carhaix and St-Brieuc be better intermediate stops on the Brest-St Malo route, or would they remove the essential Brittany-ness?

Or is it affordable to hire a cab to transport luggage for just one day, so that people who are less confident of long distances with luggages across hilly train can have a light day?
 

srw

It's a bit more complicated than that...
Jeez, don't envy you organising this - 3 CC tours to Islay, Inverness and the Lakes and I've had it! Herding hedgehogs springs to mind. If I were to choose it would be option 1, (not that I think Mrs Fu would give me the relevant approvals) - I assume you get deposits etc up front to prevent the usual drops outs/mind changers/those who throw themselves off cliffs? What about variations in average speeds? Just a couple of thoughts. Whatever you decide I'd be inclined to stick with people you know and trust. All the best!
This is not an organised tour - the non-organiser simply announces that (s)he will be riding certain roads on certain days and others are welcome to join. Individuals are responsible for organising their own accommodation and getting themselves to the start of each day. So there is no deposit and no return.

As for average speeds - you wait for the slowest riders. That's all. If you stop every few miles to regroup none of the individual waits are particularly wrong (absent a mechanical). If you're faster and don't want to wait, you simply press on for your destination - after all, this is not an organised tour.
 
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mmmmartin

mmmmartin

Random geezer
All very helpful points, esp from @srw re using other towns. Given the route isn't finalised and this is merely the thinking bit, other towns could be used. And perhaps a route that had a railway line nearby might encourage riders who were less confident. (I can see why the Hoek is such a good place to start from, btw......)
 

Fubar

Guru
This is not an organised tour - the non-organiser simply announces that (s)he will be riding certain roads on certain days and others are welcome to join. Individuals are responsible for organising their own accommodation and getting themselves to the start of each day. So there is no deposit and no return.

As for average speeds - you wait for the slowest riders. That's all. If you stop every few miles to regroup none of the individual waits are particularly wrong (absent a mechanical). If you're faster and don't want to wait, you simply press on for your destination - after all, this is not an organised tour.

Fair enough, though (again to be hyper-critical) I don't that the OP makes that clear enough (and does refer to a "bloody tricky Tour to organise" in the 2nd option) - it may be obvious to FNRTTC regulars but as it is open to anyone it may be worth pointing out up front where the commitment starts and ends.
 
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