Search found 888 matches

by richardfm
8 Mar 2024, 12:02pm
Forum: Touring & Expedition
Topic: Cycle Travel Question
Replies: 1596
Views: 209577

Re: Cycle Travel Question

Here's an exert from this month's supporter newletter
"You can now ask cycle.travel to plan a route entirely on signposted cycle routes.
If you’re taking a holiday on (say) a EuroVelo route, the UK’s National Cycle Network, or one of France’s national Véloroutes, this makes planning much quicker. No need to drag the route back and forth because cycle.travel wants to send you another way – it can now stick to signposted routes alone.
For example, planning a trip on Lon Las Cymru is now two clicks: one in Cardiff, one in Holyhead. France’s Veloscenic route is one click at Mont St Michel, another in Paris. Or you could try a cross-Europe route taking in several different routes – how about Rostock to Rome?
How it works
Just choose the new "Routes" option"
by richardfm
25 Feb 2024, 9:42pm
Forum: Cycle Camping sub-forum
Topic: Best Camping & Caravan Club sites for cycling
Replies: 26
Views: 3967

Re: Best Camping & Caravan Club sites for cycling

Wyeside in Rhayader is good for some mountain biking in the hills around the Elan Valley, or an overnight stop between Shrewsbury and Aberystwyth
by richardfm
22 Feb 2024, 9:59pm
Forum: The Tea Shop
Topic: What colour is your bike?
Replies: 26
Views: 988

Re: What colour is your bike?

I have one red, one black, one grey and one blue
by richardfm
22 Feb 2024, 7:30pm
Forum: Fun & Games
Topic: English Language - what "Does your head in" ??
Replies: 2239
Views: 125322

Re: English Language - what "Does your head in" ??

Mike Sales wrote: 22 Feb 2024, 6:24pm
Bmblbzzz wrote: 22 Feb 2024, 6:22pm
richardfm wrote: 22 Feb 2024, 6:08pm For no rational reason I dislike "upcoming" and prefer "forthcoming".
To me "upcoming" jars and sounds modern but according to https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/upcoming it has been in use since 1943.
John will tell you all you need to know. He's most upcoming.
:lol:

Or how about using upcome to mean the opposite of downcome, eg "I'm responsible for his upcome; I made him a star. It was drink that was his downcome." :lol:
Upcoming at this moment in time going forward.
:D
by richardfm
22 Feb 2024, 6:08pm
Forum: Fun & Games
Topic: English Language - what "Does your head in" ??
Replies: 2239
Views: 125322

Re: English Language - what "Does your head in" ??

For no rational reason I dislike "upcoming" and prefer "forthcoming".
To me "upcoming" jars and sounds modern but according to https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/upcoming it has been in use since 1943.
by richardfm
14 Feb 2024, 9:11am
Forum: Does anyone know … ?
Topic: Will I get on the train?
Replies: 51
Views: 3202

Re: Will I get on the train?

Lazybird wrote: 13 Feb 2024, 1:34pm I have a specific seat and bike reservation in coach B
Your seat may be in coach B but is that where the cycle storage is?
by richardfm
11 Feb 2024, 11:04pm
Forum: Does anyone know … ?
Topic: The staff of life - best served packaged?
Replies: 50
Views: 3333

Re: The staff of life - best served packaged?

Galactic wrote: 11 Feb 2024, 3:54pm The quality of bread in Britain is a good reason to emigrate.
If you are referring to shop bought bread then you don't need to emigrate, just bake your own
by richardfm
8 Feb 2024, 8:29pm
Forum: Touring & Expedition
Topic: What's the best app for planning multi-day bike trips?
Replies: 48
Views: 2349

Re: What's the best app for planning multi-day bike trips?

Richard Fairhurst wrote: 8 Feb 2024, 8:19pm
richardfm wrote: 8 Feb 2024, 6:06pm I thought the OPs complaint was that Cycle.Travel alters a route that he has uploaded from a GPX file, not one that it has worked out for him after he has given start and end points.

It sounds reasonable to me not to expect Cycle.Travel to alter an uploaded routes. Maybe the secret is to add plenty of waypoints before uploading.
cycle.travel doesn't have any sense of a GPX route per se. It only does one thing - planned routes with via points. Between each pair of via points, it will choose the route it thinks is best.

So if you import a GPX track, it has to work out where the via points need to be in order to follow the route represented by the GPX track. This is a Hard Problem and it doesn't always get it spot on, especially if the GPX is along the sort of routes c.t wouldn't usually choose - i.e. busy roads or rough tracks. (This is all explained on the upload page.)

If what you want to do is manage/play with other people's GPXs then c.t is absolutely the wrong site for that - I'd always suggest RideWithGPS for that sort of purpose.
roubaixtuesday wrote: 8 Feb 2024, 5:55pmPresumably these apps have criteria to apply (distance, road type, ascent etc) when optimising a route.

Often they do daft things like repeatedly diverting off a main road, or putting in a huge climb to avoid a short section.

It would be great if you could vary the weighting eg choose to downweight how important road type was to avoid that sort of nonsense.
You can do that with Brouter, which is pretty much infinitely customisable.

Route-planners can either be fast or customisable. The fast algorithms aren't customisable and the customisable algorithms aren't fast.* Brouter chooses to be customisable, which offers more flexibility but means it takes 15 seconds to work out a route for Land's End to John O'Groats. cycle.travel chooses to be fast, so it finds LE-JOG in less than a second, but conversely it bakes in its idea of a good route (= low traffic and scenic).

This is the good thing about there being so many sites/apps - you can choose the one that suits you. :)

* For those interested in the algorithm side of things, this is because the fast algorithms essentially pre-calculate routes between thousands of points, so route-planning just needs to retrieve the pre-calculated route rather than working out afresh each time. That breaks down if you offer customisation, because it's impossible to pre-calculate and store the best routes for every conceivable set of routing preferences the user might set.
Thank you
by richardfm
8 Feb 2024, 8:10pm
Forum: Touring & Expedition
Topic: What's the best app for planning multi-day bike trips?
Replies: 48
Views: 2349

Re: What's the best app for planning multi-day bike trips?

Psamathe wrote: 8 Feb 2024, 7:58pm
richardfm wrote: 8 Feb 2024, 6:06pm I thought the OPs complaint was that Cycle.Travel alters a route that he has uploaded from a GPX file, not one that it has worked out for him after he has given start and end points.

It sounds reasonable to me not to expect Cycle.Travel to alter an uploaded routes. Maybe the secret is to add plenty of waypoints before uploading.
Between points in a gpx the route is is undefined so must be assumed/designed by the system. Some gpx routes I've seen have surprisingly few points, others are more detailed. OP gave virtually no info about the gpx and his/her requirements gradually emerged as people were depending their time trying to help.

Then what if a gpx loaded sends the rider the wrong way down a one-way street what should cycle.travel do? create eg "turn-left here" sending you through a no entry sign? Only sensible thing is to adjust to something appropriate. Many things are possible but OP gave virtually no info about anything so not possible to say what happened. Plus, does anybody really want to dpend their time on investigating anyway?

Ian
That all makes sense, thank you.
by richardfm
8 Feb 2024, 6:06pm
Forum: Touring & Expedition
Topic: What's the best app for planning multi-day bike trips?
Replies: 48
Views: 2349

Re: What's the best app for planning multi-day bike trips?

I thought the OPs complaint was that Cycle.Travel alters a route that he has uploaded from a GPX file, not one that it has worked out for him after he has given start and end points.

It sounds reasonable to me not to expect Cycle.Travel to alter an uploaded routes. Maybe the secret is to add plenty of waypoints before uploading.
by richardfm
5 Feb 2024, 10:17pm
Forum: Touring & Expedition
Topic: Cycling in Cyprus
Replies: 4
Views: 426

Re: Cycling in Cyprus

Although Cyprus is not in the Schengen they apply the same rules about passport validity and length of stay without a Visa.
You can travel to the north but have to go through border controls.
More info here https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advic ... quirements
by richardfm
4 Feb 2024, 9:56am
Forum: Touring & Expedition
Topic: What's the best app for planning multi-day bike trips?
Replies: 48
Views: 2349

Re: What's the best app for planning multi-day bike trips?

pal wrote: 4 Feb 2024, 9:47am Another vote for cycle.travel. As others have said, it tends to require a little bit of human input for very long routes (specifying via points, etc), but I trust its routing decisions far more than those of komoot et al, and I think the interface is excellent too. Like MrsHJ, I tend to plan my long rides as a single route, and then use the built-in widget to split them into day rides, for fine-tuning and uploading to my Garmin.

The free version gets you everything you need, and a small subscription/donation adds a few more features (more choice of base maps, first access to new features, etc). All that, and you get first rate user support right here on this forum (over on the cycle.travel thread...)
And the small donation gives you a warm feeling that you are doing something good and helping to ensure that Cycle Travel will continue to develop
by richardfm
2 Feb 2024, 9:32am
Forum: Bikes & Bits – Technical section
Topic: Fixing a non-working front derailleur
Replies: 73
Views: 3376

Re: Fixing a non-working front derailleur

ThisWreckage wrote: 2 Feb 2024, 9:27am
Carlton green wrote: 2 Feb 2024, 9:18am
ThisWreckage wrote: 2 Feb 2024, 8:51am I live in Darlington.
Try talking to the folk in your local cycling club and asking for repair shop recommendations. I think that that might be by email and by just turning up to the start of one of their easy runs and chatting to people - don’t need to do the run and can’t with a bust bike.

https://www.cyclinguk.org/local-groups/ ... cling-club

It’s sounds to me like the repair shop you are using isn’t doing much of a job, when something is fixed it should stay fixed. Derailleur gears aren’t necessarily that complex or fragile that they are prone to pack up working.
I've owned derailleur bikes for decades and they all had the same problem of gradually failing after being set. The gears worked well when the local shop - who refurbish bikes, they obviously know their stuff - handed it back to me. They must have done it right but I knew that within a month some of the gears (usually in the middle) would stop engaging... and they did. It always happens, no idea why. As far as my experience goes, this is a weakness of derailleurs. They need frequent expert maintenance which I can't do, no matter how many videos I watch.
I don't believe your experience of derailleurs is typical. Usually after being adjusted properly they work for a very long time
Chains and cassettes wear out, cables fray and corroded. I have replaced all of them and not had to touch the derailleurs.
by richardfm
18 Jan 2024, 9:14pm
Forum: Fun & Games
Topic: English Language - what "Does your head in" ??
Replies: 2239
Views: 125322

Re: Dumb Britain?

thirdcrank wrote: 18 Jan 2024, 9:08pm
richardfm wrote: 18 Jan 2024, 7:35pm
thirdcrank wrote: 18 Jan 2024, 5:24pm Perhaps somebody can enlighten me. It's doing my head in.

There's a regular feature in Private Eye magazine featuring "dumb" replies in various TV quizes. There's one in the current edition which has baffled me. It's from ITV's Lingo
What baffles you?
I cannot see the "point" of this being in Dumb Britain. I presume it must be very obvious but not to me
Because of the irony of someone claiming to be a stickler for words and then using the ungrammatical sentence "I'm grammar police"