Navigation for long distance ride

[drchrishawkins]

Four friends are planning a ride from Ascot to Glasgow to raise money for charity - BLESMA and REACH primarily. We are using Michelin route finder to map the details of the route - looks OK and I have tested the first part (by car!). Any views on the best way to navigate to 400+ miles - we do not want to purchase a GPS device because of the cost. Any experience on the alternatives woul dbe most welcome.

 

[TVC]

I photocopy pages from the AA atlas, mark the route in a yellow highlighter, fold and stuff in a clear plastic food bag. If I'm planning to go through bits were junction layouts are not clear on a map then a quick peek on google streetview shows the lie of the land.


Oh, and by the way, welcome

 

[yello]

Make yourself a route sheet and mount it on the handlebars (stiff card or plastic, cable ties, etc)

A route sheet is just a short hand list of directions. You could download one from somewhere (e.g. audax uk) to see the notations they use but it's just as easy to make up your own - and probably more memorable. You could get 400 mile down to a single laminated A4 card, probably smaller with a bit of imagination. Particularly if you avoid big towns as invariably it's the directions through those that tend to be more detailed and so take more space.

Take maps too though.

 

[snorri]

A hand-held compass attached to a belt loop and available for less than a tenner, is helpful when the map leaves you in doubt.

 

[Glow worm]

I know you don't want to use GPS, but I use one of these for long rides Memory Map 2800 . It fits neatly onto your handlebars and you download O.S. maps or sections of the O.S. maps you need. I used it last month to get from here to Amsterdam (I downloaded the Dutch maps onto it too) and it worked a treat- didn't get lost once.

Two drawbacks, the main one being price as you say- think it was about £250. It was expensive, but then I do use it all the time. The other, you only get about 6-7 hours out of the battery when fully charged, so you would need to charge at the end of each day. You can adjust the settings for power saver which can help.

 

[ian turner]

So none of you have a smartphone ?

 

[Flying Dodo]

Before I got a GPS, I'd cut & paste sections from the route on bikehike/Google maps into a Word document, so for something like a 100 mile ride, I might end up with 8 pages or so, with 3 sections on each page, which usually gave enough detail for navigating.

 

[Aperitif]

Four friends are planning a ride from Ascot to Glasgow to raise money for charity - BLESMA and REACH primarily. We are using Michelin route finder to map the details of the route - looks OK and I have tested the first part (by car!). Any views on the best way to navigate to 400+ miles - we do not want to purchase a GPS device because of the cost. Any experience on the alternatives woul dbe most welcome.

As you're new here, Chris, you may find planning helpful using one or other of the mapping sites. Cross reference these with a larger 'Road Map' and it may help.

www.bikeroutetoaster.com may be of interest, but the one in favour at the moment is www.ridewithgps.com. You don't have to have a GPS to plot a route and these sites show you the ups and downs along the way. Obviously, with GPS the data is transferred... but handwritten notes can be just as good.

Good luck!

 

[robjh]

Have I missed something here? What's wrong with maps? GPS can be useful occasionally for micro-navigating if you're on minor roads where the junctions aren't signposted, but otherwise it's an expensive piece of kit with only a very small display area, and then needs to be charged up - itself an extra logistical problem on a long tour.
In the UK I buy one of those large-size road atlases that come with a spiral binding, and tear out the pages that I will need for each trip. For a 100-mile ride I rarely need more than 3 sheets of paper, that can be folded up so that the current one is on top. I then put these in a plastic wallet, which is either attached to the bar bag if I'm on my tourer, or in a hiking-style map wallet if on my fast road bike (and I've worked out a way of winding the cord round the bars so that it stays in the right place, though plastic zip ties would probably help too). OK, you have to refold / re-order the maps every 50 miles or so to get the right section on top, but that's not a big deal.
You can often pick these atlases up for less than £10, and last year's ones can be got for far less. I've been using the same one for about 5 years but the folds on the Midlands and Wales pages are getting a bit thin now!

In other countries I try and find the map that gives me the best match between scale and readability depending on the distance I'm planning to cover. I often cut the covers off, and they work like the tear-out pages that I use in the UK.

 

[Ticktockmy]

Four friends are planning a ride from Ascot to Glasgow to raise money for charity - BLESMA and REACH primarily. We are using Michelin route finder to map the details of the route - looks OK and I have tested the first part (by car!). Any views on the best way to navigate to 400+ miles - we do not want to purchase a GPS device because of the cost. Any experience on the alternatives woul dbe most welcome.

Whilst I have a Satmap GPS mounted on my bars, which tell me were I am at a point in time, I use a Philips Concise road Atlas for Britian as my route planner which is A5 size maps. I means i can get a bigger overall picture of my future legs of my route.

 

[Amanda P]

I'm with Robjh on this one.

Pick up last year's road atlas from a bargain bookshop and just tear out the pages you need. Mark your route with a highlighter. If you're really after saving weight, throw away each page when you've cycled off it (or keep them for emergency loo paper).

Cheaper and more waterproof than a GPS; needs no batteries, and no-one will bother stealing it off your bike. Unlike route notes, it still works to find your way if you decide to alter your route, get lost or diverted.

 

[Black Sheep]

I navigate using a list of a route from google maps, make a note of which villages I pass near or through and when I see a signpost for it, I head for it, if I then see another post for the next village I will follow it.

I also use street view to see how junctions look for the route I'm taking, often helps with recognising which way to go without having to stop and check the map.

 

[cyberknight]

you could always get a map holder..

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Bike-Bicycle-...d=190487076711&ps=63&clkid=299166459883886640


I do not have a smart phone or GPS sytem for the bike , if i was going to cycle such a distance once then a google map printout with the route printed out/highlighted is the way i would go.

 

[Broadside]

I take screenshots from Googlemaps as others do, then print off at home. We have an inkjet printer where the colour runs if the printout gets wet, so for example after my 80 mile ride on Sat some of the pages were becoming unreadable from getting wet with sweat in my jersey back pocket, easily sorted with a plastic bag but just beware. we have a cheap bookshop nearby (The Works) and you can buy a GB AA roadmap for under a fiver, if you need maps for a very long route this would be cheaper than printing out lots of pages (just ripping out the pages you need) as our ink cartridges are eye wateringly expensive!

 

[pshore]

Re the paper map. I found the best one to have in the pannier is the green OS road maps.

They seem to have the best size to detail ratio for long distance road riding. Eg all of Wales in the size and format of a landranger 1 to 50k. However as someone said on here they are no longer being made, but are one of the map types made open by the OS. You can now download and print if that's what you want.

I like to plan my route online and then mark out each day with a hi-lighter pen for an easy overview.