Cycle routes - how do you find yours?

[Vantage]

If you can keep up, join a bike club. They'll know plenty of routes with nice stop offs for a brew etc.
As Colin says, GPS units are a god send...at least till they route you up a dead end or into a farmers field which mine did a few times. But they can be rerouted without the need for internet.
https://cycle.travel/map is brill for finding and planning routes although the constant detours off main/busy roads can be tedious.

 

[Alex321]

GPS devices don't depend on a phone signal, they just need a clear view of an area of the sky large enough for line of sight to at least 3 or 4 of 24 GPS satellites! They work reliably except perhaps when they are...

• in very dense woodland
• in deep narrow canyons
• surrounded by huge skyscrapers
• jammed by the enemy in a warzone

I have not lost GPS signal in the 20 years that I have been using GPS devices.

PS I often lose phone signal on my rides so I would not use any solution that required a reliable phone signal!

There is one steep hill I ride sometimes where I do lose GPS for a few yards - as you suggest, that one is dense woods both sides & overhanging, plus a near cliff upwards on one side.

But it comes back before long, and my device/Strava just plots it as a straight line from where it was lost to where it regains it. And since there are no junctions in eth "dead" stretch, it would be no issue for navigation.

 

[mjr]

The NCN system is entirely useless for planning longer rides - I wouldn't dream of using it for that purpose. NCN6 6 round Shepshed doesn't seem too bad from a "massive detour" perspective, but doubtless is rubbish for all the other usual reasons. [...]

Ah, don't over-egg it... you sound like a disappointed lover! Maybe you're one of many who heard of the NCN and loved the idea, but then found the reality had more compromises than you'd choose to make.

It clearly can be useful for planning longer rides, going by the numbers who ride almost the entirety of quite long stretches of it. It's not great for transport IMO, which seems ironic given that "Sustrans" was short for "Sustainable Transport". For example, as mentioned earlier, even on tour, I wouldn't stick to the NCN where I see no point, and I find that cycle.travel usually does the right thing. cycle.travel will only send you from Lynn to Boston by following NCN1's 20 mile detour through Wisbech if you change the settings to insist on signed routes. It won't do Lynn to Norwich following the NCN1 detour to the coast even then, as there's a more direct Local Cycle Route signed Lynn to Fakenham.

 

[HLaB]

I usually start by clicking on A to B in the www.ridewithgps.com route planner then tweaking it with the inbuilt street view and other maps. I might also crosscheck it with Google.

 

[JonBuoy]

Looks like they've re-routed it since I last used it to be the way I'd go coming out of Belton, not been up that way since I shattered my Femur 12 years ago. Where it splits in 2 in Belton wasn't there before.

I assumed that you were talking about the loop through Osgathorpe and Worthington as opposed to the direct route from Belton to Tonge which uses a short section of the (usually very quiet) A453. This is the route that I usually use but the downside is the fairly steep steps down onto the old railway track in Tonge.