West Midlands / Oxfordshire

[Campag]

I'm in the initial stages of planning a four day cycle trip, taking in Rugby or Daventry, down towards Buckingham; across to Banbury; then Stratford upon Avon and back to Rugby / Daventry. Stopping in B n B's or Travelodge / Premier Inn type places.

Mixture of minor roads and canal / railway routes. I have a map from Sustrans, looks like this could include parts of routes 50; 51; 5 and 41. If anyone has any experience of these routes, and any particularly good stretches or alternatively sections to avoid I'd be grateful for the information. There are four of us on a mixture of road and hybrid bikes.

[robgul]

How many miles per day?

I live on Route 5 @ Stratford with a link to Route 41 - they are both pretty tortuous with some really dud surfaces and annoying bits ..... you'd do better planning your own route using the OS maps or one of the online systems.

Rob

[pwa]

How many miles per day?

I live on Route 5 @ Stratford with a link to Route 41 - they are both pretty tortuous with some really dud surfaces and annoying bits ..... you'd do better planning your own route using the OS maps or one of the online systems.

Rob

Doesn't the Heart of England 300km Audax ride cover some of this territory? That route is pretty good at picking out nice roads.

http://www.aukweb.net/events/detail/20-146/

[Tigerbiten]

Another down vote for sustrans routes.
There surface can be anything from good tarmac to vary rough mud track.
They tend to go out of there way to keep you off any main road.
Plus the odd anti-cycling barrier ......
So I'll follow them if I'm going slow and they're going the way I'm going but I won't go out of my way to try and follow one.

For a trip like this .......
I'd very roughly plan out the route to roughly my daily distance.
Then look around this area for my night stop.
Once I decide on my stop, I'll go back and redo the whole route between the start and finish points.
Double check everything and then rinse and repeat for the next day.

Luck .........

[robgul]

How many miles per day?

I live on Route 5 @ Stratford with a link to Route 41 - they are both pretty tortuous with some really dud surfaces and annoying bits ..... you'd do better planning your own route using the OS maps or one of the online systems.

Rob

Doesn't the Heart of England 300km Audax ride cover some of this territory? That route is pretty good at picking out nice roads.

http://www.aukweb.net/events/detail/20-146/

... yes, sort of for the HoE Audax although not as far south/east as Buckingham - but the "plan it yourself" way that Tigerbitten suggests is the obvious way to do it.

Although I have Mem Map on my PC I've started using Strava to plan routes as it has an excellent "snap to road" feature and can export a .gpx file (and I don't use all the "mine's bigger than yours" Strava performance stuff - just the system and keep my routes "private")

Rob

[mjr]

The great benefit of Sustrans routes are that most are well signed now, but ideally I'd use https://cycle.travel/map or http://www.cyclosm.org to check surfaces before trusting them. Most of them have surfaces actually maintained by highway authorities which vary and I've been unimpressed by Warwickshire before.

Another useful tool can be to look at historical maps for what used to be main routes and no longer are, but there may not be as many in that area and I often find they're already cycle routes.

[Oldjohnw]

I've just planned a route for next April from Leamington Spa to Oxford via Stow on the Wold using the brilliant cycle travel website.

[TrevA]

Beware of using Strava to plan routes. I’m a member of a club whose ride leaders plan routes using Strava and I’m constantly having to point out to them that their planned road ride route goes along a muddy bridlepath. I would double check any such route against an OS map before using. Even Cycle.travel isn’t perfect - I recently planned a route to a local cafe using this and it routed me down a farm track.

[robgul]

Beware of using Strava to plan routes. I’m a member of a club whose ride leaders plan routes using Strava and I’m constantly having to point out to them that their planned road ride route goes along a muddy bridlepath. I would double check any such route against an OS map before using. Even Cycle.travel isn’t perfect - I recently planned a route to a local cafe using this and it routed me down a farm track.

Ah - just to clarify ... I wasn't for a moment suggesting asking Strava (or indeed any other app) for a "from to" route but to plot it myself using the Strava mapping base.

IME I have yet to find any auto-routing system that works/is sensible/logical - however, the Google Maps directions from/to with "cycling" selected usually makes a reasonable fist of things. BUT check with some decent mapping.

Rob

[Richard Fairhurst]

It depends on what sort of cyclist you are - for some, NCN routes are ideal, while others think nothing of miles on a B or A road. There are a fair number of roads in the Banbury/Buckingham belt which look fine from a map but which can be a bit ratrun-like, so it's as well to be cautious. Generally the NCN routes will take the quietest roads, though that's not an infallible rule. If you post a sketch route then people can make comments on individual stretches.

Beware of using Strava to plan routes. I’m a member of a club whose ride leaders plan routes using Strava and I’m constantly having to point out to them that their planned road ride route goes along a muddy bridlepath. I would double check any such route against an OS map before using. Even Cycle.travel isn’t perfect - I recently planned a route to a local cafe using this and it routed me down a farm track.

Let me know where that was and I'm happy to take a look!

[Oldjohnw]

Beware of using Strava to plan routes. I’m a member of a club whose ride leaders plan routes using Strava and I’m constantly having to point out to them that their planned road ride route goes along a muddy bridlepath. I would double check any such route against an OS map before using. Even Cycle.travel isn’t perfect - I recently planned a route to a local cafe using this and it routed me down a farm track.

I transfer my cycle travel route to OS. A bit laborious but I like maps.it usually sorts out any potential traps, and, of course, introduces lots of interesting details.

[Campag]

Thanks for the replies - as I expected those Sustrans routes are of variable quality. My companions prefer off-road where it is reasonably well surfaced. Looks like I should check both options - minor roads as well as off-road.

I've used Garmin connect and Komoot to plan routes and one of these took me across a couple of fields and over two stiles. Quite interesting on a recumbent. So yes, worth double checking on OS map.

[TrevA]

It depends on what sort of cyclist you are - for some, NCN routes are ideal, while others think nothing of miles on a B or A road. There are a fair number of roads in the Banbury/Buckingham belt which look fine from a map but which can be a bit ratrun-like, so it's as well to be cautious. Generally the NCN routes will take the quietest roads, though that's not an infallible rule. If you post a sketch route then people can make comments on individual stretches.

Beware of using Strava to plan routes. I’m a member of a club whose ride leaders plan routes using Strava and I’m constantly having to point out to them that their planned road ride route goes along a muddy bridlepath. I would double check any such route against an OS map before using. Even Cycle.travel isn’t perfect - I recently planned a route to a local cafe using this and it routed me down a farm track.

Let me know where that was and I'm happy to take a look!

I plotted a route from Bingham, Notts to Belton Garden Centre, north of Grantham. I know the route as have done the ride several times. On the return leg, instead of routing me up the hill towards Great Gonerby along Belton Lane, it routed me up a parallel farm track. Other than that, the route was fine, as were other routes I’ve used it for.

[Richard Fairhurst]

I plotted a route from Bingham, Notts to Belton Garden Centre, north of Grantham. I know the route as have done the ride several times. On the return leg, instead of routing me up the hill towards Great Gonerby along Belton Lane, it routed me up a parallel farm track. Other than that, the route was fine, as were other routes I’ve used it for.

Thanks - an OpenStreetMap mapping issue by the look of it! I've corrected OSM and it'll reflect that next time I update the data.