Finished 1st Leg - LE to Manchester

[helenheart]

Well, how I love long distance cycling......wandering thru exquisitely beautiful countryside on warm sunny days, lunching in gorgeous country pubs, drinking tea in cafes that pop out of nowhere, checking in to my pub-for-the-night and luxuriating in my one (sadly) pint of cider accompanied by salt and vinegar potato chips. Chatting to the locals and snapping hundreds of photos, with my camera kept in my shirt back pocket. The satisfaction of getting from here to there each day and the bliss of solid night's sleep followed by full breakfasts. I had forgotten all of this and can't wait for my second leg - hopefully before it gets too cold up north.
That was the good news - now on to the bad!
My mapping skills were crap! Utterly useless! I live a mainly gadget free life, so chose the paper option. I will not bore you with details, but on the next leg, I will buy the largest, best-est road map, I am thinking Philips Navigational is the best (thanks, forum) and rip out the pages I need, then highlight the roads where I will be following NCN routes - using a color coding for when 2 NCN routes meet. The beauty of doing E2E in more than one go, is that I have the beauty of hindsight to correct a few things. I doubt I will get lost (much) using this method, but I will also be aware that locals think they know the area very very well, and probably do, but when it comes to passing that long known knowledge on to a stranger, can give instructions that can send you to the strangest (wrong) places. I will also be aware that Mondays and Tuesdays are days when pubs in small towns may be closed. 2 days in a row, I stared at a closed pub for lunch, with no close options nearby. I didn't starve to death, but the disappointment will be diminished second time around.
I was blessed with good weather, but now know that my rain jacket can double as a warm jacket, so don't need both, although maybe Scotland will make a fool out of me for that statement.
Oh, and ladies - I think it's just a gender thing, maybe not? - people stare!!! Walking around towns in biking gear......you would have thought I was walking round with a machete and machine gun slung over each shoulder - what's with that????

All in all - what a trip. The advice I took from this forum was sensational - thank you all. The best I took, was to take the A3072 from Hallsworthy to Tiverton, it rocks! 44 miles of one great road, no huge hills and light traffic, when I cycled.
Eat at THREE LITTLE PIGS in Crediton, it is not on the main road thru town, so ask for it. I was gonna link the website, but it does not convey the true atmosphere of the place - it is very quirky and funky.
Thanks for reading!
Helen xo

[Richard Fairhurst]

I am thinking Philips Navigational is the best (thanks, forum) and rip out the pages I need, then highlight the roads where I will be following NCN routes - using a color coding for when 2 NCN routes meet.

Have a look for the AA Close-Up Atlas - it's very much like the Philips Navigator, but it actually shows NCN routes without the need to colour them in. It's out-of-print now, but you can get second-hand ones on Amazon for £15ish.

[helenheart]

Life just got a little sweeter! Thanks Richard.

[nickpaton]

Very interesting account, Helen, and we'll done too.

Whilst we used GPS units for our supposed primary navigation, in reality one stopped working early on, the second had the wrong mapping, and on mine, the third (out of three) I manage to delete all the routes to the end of the trip - oops!

Fortunately, for 'backup', we also carried pages from an old Philips road atlas with the complete end2end route highlighted on it (for clarity at a glance), and this was perfectly satisfactory in practice, and should always be the primary means of navigation. It's simply too risky / foolish to rely just on electronic means for your navigation - yeah controversial I know!
What we also really liked was simply being able to look at the map to give context to our ride.

The difficult sections are towns where paper maps aren't detailed enough, and we used printed out blow up sections from our GPS route planning site (I used ridewithgps site - there are other good ones too).
Remember to print out on a laser printer as inkjet ink runs in damp conditions!

Also, make sure your map carrier really is waterproof, especially among sewn edges. We had soggy maps on a couple of occasions.

[phil parker]

Eat at THREE LITTLE PIGS in Crediton, it is not on the main road thru town, so ask for it. I was gonna link the website, but it does not convey the true atmosphere of the place - it is very quirky and funky.

If anyone wants to try somewhere 'really quirky' and 'really funky' try the Highwayman Inn at Sourton near Okehampton - it is amazing!

Well done on your trip, I'm sure the second leg will contain plenty of adventures.

[Mick F]

If anyone wants to try somewhere 'really quirky' and 'really funky' try the Highwayman Inn at Sourton near Okehampton - it is amazing!

Oh yes!
I cycle past there fairly regularly.

We've not been in there for some years, but Buster, the landlord built the place. He's passed away now, and his widow is knocking on no doubt. Their daughter, Sally, lives across the road at "Cobweb Hall".

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.69415 ... 312!8i6656

[wirral_cyclist]

Blimey I first went in there, or rather the big barrels playhouse, must've been 40 years ago as I was too young for the pub proper. I went back probably 10-12 years ago as I stumbled across it and thought 'oh that's that odd pub' - great seeing inside pub (coins hammered into bar timbers with barely any gaps ) then having an amazing pasty to go with a good local pint was really nice.

[F70100]

When is episode 2?

[phil parker]

If anyone wants to try somewhere 'really quirky' and 'really funky' try the Highwayman Inn at Sourton near Okehampton - it is amazing!

Oh yes!
I cycle past there fairly regularly.

We've not been in there for some years, but Buster, the landlord built the place. He's passed away now, and his widow is knocking on no doubt. Their daughter, Sally, lives across the road at "Cobweb Hall".

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.69415 ... 312!8i6656

It is his daughter Sally, along with her husband, who now runs the pub and she's very proud of her father's legacy. I have stayed at the Bhundu campsite on a few occasions over the years, either when passing through or just to enjoy some cycling on Dartmoor, and I normally use the pub at the Bhundu Site. However, when I went in March this year it was closed, it didn't open until Easter, and the site owner told me the next nearest pub, The Highwayman Inn. I wish I'd known that before- it is only a mile walk down the cycle track - and substantially proclaimed as the most unusual Inn in Britain. A great base for cycling as well, I'm going to have to have another weekend there this summer, especially as I've bought a new tent.

Sorry to the OP for distracting the thread!

[helenheart]

When is episode 2?

Arrgghhh - you had to ask!!!
A decent amount of time from work and money are issues, so sadly it might be same time next year. However, I'm trying to squeeze in a Manchester to Edinburgh leg this September as I now have the cycling bug and don't want to wait 11 months, plus I'm busting to try the Caledonian Sleeper. Fingers crossed.