Planning progress

With just two weeks to go, some frantic map planning has been going on - some of it extremely detailed, some very rough. Strangely I found the first three or four days the most tricky. Heading from home to the start and back west again, I wanted to go out and come back a different way, and ended up going either too far north (Swaffham) or too far south, and settled in the end for a 'third way' with slightly different roads but still taking in Ely.

Kettering really is in the centre of the fat bit of the country, and I found with a slight degree of horror that one planned route would take me along roads that are on my daily commute to Northampton, something I'm very keen to avoid on holiday. So I planned a southerly-ish route from Ely to Olney, avoiding well-known (one might say worn-out) routes and instead heading quickly to Bedfordshire and roads that I first cycled as a youngster, probably on my first Dawes bicycle. There is a campsite at Emberton and then it's into some scenic countryside heading to Stratford for the end of day 5. From there across the Malverns (the scenery starts getting more and more lumpy from now on) into Wales and the Brecons, hopefully arriving at St David's on day 9.

I've seen St David's (it's very nice) so don't see much reason to hang around particularly as I seem to get there after just 30-odd miles of that day's cycling, so the plan is to start heading back straight away. Coming slightly south I can get to Monmouth and come up through Oxfordshire to get home on day 14. The total estimated distance is 840 miles.

This is a very rough back-of-the-envelope distance but I did just want to see if it might be possible to go from home to home, and it looks as if the idea is a goer. I've also found most campsites to aim for (often the limiting factor of a day's ride). Now to start cutting up the road atlases and drawing the route on them, and setting up the Garmin gps. For some reason I can't seem to get routes to gpx on bikeroutetoaster.com, which is my favourite planning website, so will try another that has been recommended - wheresthepath.com. I think this site is better as it uses OS maps, but unfortunately there's a limit on the maps that can be downloaded per day and at night I've sometimes been unable to access it.

It shouldn't be too hard though, should it? Going east-west, the sun is either in your eyes, or it isn't. Simples.