Your ride today....

[blackrat]

I needed to get out this morning after having a bad case of the blues all weekend.

The plan was to catch the train to Exeter St Davids, cycle the 35km to Tiverton Parkway where is catch the train back to Taunton, and that's what I did.

I'm always interested in the 1.5km ride to the station during the school run. Lots of dodgy u-turns and pushy driving but nothing that made me feel unsafe. There were plenty of other people on bikes, do that helps.

Cycle.travel guided me out of Exeter on a great route - thanks! I was using my £60 sim-less phone for navigation as usual. I'm coming up to 3 years using it in all conditions without a problem.

The next part of the route was unpleasant riding on footpaths now redesignated as shared paths alongside busy roads.

Eventually I turned off onto typically lumpy Devon lanes. Great!

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I was delighted to find the Willand cycleway, a great little piece of active travel infrastructure.

I didn't find a good mood or rhythm today, but that was my mood, not the weather, trains or other people.

The next part of the route was unpleasant riding on footpaths now redesignated as shared paths alongside busy roads.
I find this is one of the drawbacks of using CycleTravel. Their algorithms put cyclists on shared paths and useless cycleways all too often. That app needs to be used with caution.

 

[All uphill]

The next part of the route was unpleasant riding on footpaths now redesignated as shared paths alongside busy roads.
I find this is one of the drawbacks of using CycleTravel. Their algorithms put cyclists on shared paths and useless cycleways all too often. That app needs to be used with caution.

I'll come to cycle.travel's defence. It has never once put me on a route that felt dangerous. For me that's a huge plus over the likes of Google, for example.

I'm not going to blame a free app for sub optimal cycling infrastructure!

 

[blackrat]

I'll come to cycle.travel's defence. It has never once put me on a route that felt dangerous. For me that's a huge plus over the likes of Google, for example.

I'm not going to blame a free app for sub optimal cycling infrastructure!

I'm not going to blame a free app for sub optimal cycling infrastructure!

As much as I question CycleTravel's selection of paths and cycleways, the only reason it is free is because other people step up and pay for a subscription.

 

[Andy in Germany]

I'll come to cycle.travel's defence. It has never once put me on a route that felt dangerous. For me that's a huge plus over the likes of Google, for example.

I'm not going to blame a free app for sub optimal cycling infrastructure!

It certainly works very well in my local area, which was a pleasant surprise.

 

[Oldhippy]

Didn't Hobbes on Tour navigate most of Europe on Cycle. Travel?

 

[blackrat]

It certainly works very well in my local area, which was a pleasant surprise.

As I understand it, because of many European country's far superior cycling infrastructure, shared paths, cycle ways and such are actually preferable to cycling on many of the roads. And since CycleTravel's routing uses many of them, it works well there but not in Britain.

 

[PeteXXX]

Nice circuit of Hamtun this afternoon. I had a few chires to do at daughter's house on the way round so worked out well..

I decided to ride anticlockwise so I didn't get the headwind on the raised Washlands path from Brackmills to Riverside..

Love the Aubretia at this time of the year.

Around 17 miles & quite warm when I got back home 🏡

 

[Dogtrousers]

Any app at all requires the application of your brain. If you just let an app choose your whole route then you'll end up with whatever that app thinks the average cyclist wants. If you exactly match the app's view of average then great, but you probably don't. So you should double check what it's suggesting. Think of the app's suggestion as a first draft. Have a look at the map, are there interesting detours you could make? Is the app doing anything a bit weird/ silly/ undesirable (They all can do that). Get fine tuning.