Fosse Way - Grittleton/Crudwell - Whats it like ? Nicest alternative road route?

[KnittyNorah]

The definitive map is quite useful, especially for Veloviewer tiling...
View attachment 588356
That said, with e.g. NCN routes, surface is almost the opposite issue. You don't know when a nice stretch of tarmac is going to turn into knarly gravel - at least they're removing some of the gates!

I don't have much experience with bound rubber crumb, but it sounds like it might be a surface that works for all.

I LOVE maps - I always have done, I can still remember my dad teaching me how to read them and taking me up to a local hilltop with one, to demonstrate how it all worked and 'translated' on the ground. It was like magic when I realised how what I saw around from my vantage point on the hill related to the lines, colours and symbols on the maps. Then at the age of about 10 I realised that I could borrow OS maps from the library and so along with my weekly library books I would usually get a map out, too. It didn't matter which map - Highlands, Cornwall, Norfolk Broads, Cader Idris, I was content to simply read it!
It was a very happy day indeed for me when definitive maps started to go online. Comments and reports are vitally important when travelling by horse, though, and so accessing them via the county/borough/whatever council's facilities is usually the best option.

 

[Spartak]

Great pub in Grittleton.... The Neeld Arms

 

[Solocle]

Hi folks, thanks all for the very helpful replies. I would have got back sooner but I had to go out and I have no smart phone.

I am fairly new at bike route mapping sites and also pretty new to CycleChat, so my best way of describing the route is to say on
www.cyclestreets.net
(no need to join or anything)
type into the route planner
'Grittleton' to 'Cirencester'
one of the routes offered has a long straight line which is the section I mentioned. It ends just above and a bit beyond Crudwell. If I do the search on https://cycle.travel/map it only seems to do the route partly up the same straight line before coming off onto a road.

When is this tour? I'm quite possibly going ahead with my Fosse Way adventure on the bank holiday weekend, so could report back on that section.

That'll be my bike, make of that what you will.