(Not wishing to jump the gun here, these are just some of my ideas; make of them what you will...)
I reckon if the decision was made to do an all-counties relay route then we might as well go the whole hog and choose the most scenic and challenging route possible, rather than the usual shortest and quickest, don't you think? Why waste the opportunity to visit the best that the country has to offer?
My vote would be to avoid busy A-roads wherever possible, even if that means meandering over some very hilly lanes and adding many miles to the total distance.
There should be no rides where we just cross a county border to say we've been there and then immediately leave again. Let someone with local knowledge choose an interesting route across or round each county. Okay,
Rutland might not take long...
Getting all the northern Scottish counties in might be difficult since CC members are a bit thin on the ground up there!
It would be easier to stick to the mainland, but should we try and take in Northern Ireland, (the Isle of Man - not officially a British county) and the big Scottish islands too? It would seem a shame not to go to places like Mull and Skye.
It would be good if each leg was an official CycleChat forum ride with at least 2 members taking part per leg. The only problem there might be getting enough riders for the Mon-Fri rides, assuming that the relay was to be completed on consecutive days rather than being broken up into weekend chunks.
Oh, and I think the counties should be the traditional counties rather than the administrative counties we now refer to - we could work to
this map. (I think that Yorkshire is too big though, so we should be riding the traditional 'Ridings' - North, West and East.)
So, there would be at least 86 counties, and more places if we split Yorkshire into the 3 Ridings and visit islands as well. I reckon it could take a couple of months to complete the relay at 50-100 miles a day.
It would be a really big job to plan a relay ride like this so that a scenic ride across one county takes us to the right place to do the scenic ride across the next one. We'd need cafes and shops in all the right places, and people planning on doing several consecutive days would need somewhere to stay.
If we decide to do this, we could draw up a list of counties and have a vote on which iconic places we really must ride to/round/over in each one. For example, Dartmoor in Devon, Exmoor in Somerset, Holme Moss in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Ditchling Beacon in Sussex, Bealach na Bà in Ross and Cromarty.
I think that this would be so much more interesting than your typical JOGLE/LEJOG (not that I'm knocking them).
I wouldn't have thought that any of us would have the legs, time or money to do every stage of the relay, but it would be good to tackle a choice selection.
Well, what do you think?
