Regardless of the type of ride you are doing, route planning is often key to getting maximum enjoyment out of the ride. For some, getting the map out (physically or virtually) is half the fun, but for others it can be off putting, particularly if you’re trying a new type of cycling, such as velocipede packing off road. I thought it would be helpful to share my wits from what I have learned in six years of planning cycling routes professionally, and help you plan your perfect cycling adventure.

Be realistic

Being realistic well-nigh your route is the most important translating on route planning. The loftiness you imbricate in a day will hugely vary depending on your bike, your worthiness to ride, the terrain, and moreover the weather (see increasingly below). The first thing I unchangingly squint at is the ratio of takeoff a route includes compared to its distance. This won’t be an word-for-word figure: While the length doesn’t vary a lot, several route planning apps will come up with variegated numbers for the ascent. But if you use those numbers with some caution, it will requite you a good indication. If you are new to cycling, it’ll take a few rides to understand what is performable for you in regards to takeoff and length. The surface of a route will moreover have a considerable impact on your route planning. The thinner a path gets on your screen or map, the increasingly likely you are to be moving slower. Remember that you can unchangingly proffer a route, but wearing it short might leave you with the sinking feeling that you missed the weightier bits.

Think well-nigh the weather

The weather conditions can make a huge difference, expressly when riding off-road. I ride my velocipede in all seasons. While personally I think winter rides are often much increasingly rewarding, they are moreover much shorter. When I cycled from Oslo to Berlin recently with Mark Beaumont, we were way too would-be with our daily distances, and had to replan our whole route without day one, as the stereotype speed was scrutinizingly half of what we had planned for. From personal wits I find that rain makes me trundling faster than expected, while a steady headwind can hands half the planned speed or stop you entirely. Route planning apps like Komoot and Google Maps will requite you a good estimate, but they can’t consider the weather conditions. When we planned our Explore Your Boundaries route in Edinburgh in 2020 we were expected to trundling it in well-nigh 7 hours, but it took us 14 hours in the end – cycling on snow and ice took much longer than cycling the route in dry summer conditions.

Route planning apps are a pretty good start

I have mainly used Komoot as a route planner for most of my recent work, including mapping routes for my upcoming typesetting ‘Bikepacking Scotland’. It’s a very intuitive route planner, and the two main features that set it untied from other route planners are the nomination between variegated types of bikes and the possibility to squint at what’s underneath your undecorous line. Its sport specific maps are a useful full-length as well, as well as the variegated map layers that can help to tweak your route or map off-grid segments. Komoot is based on Unshut Street Maps, which are updated increasingly commonly than Ordnance Survey maps, but sometimes the information can be incorrect as well. Komoot might flag a segment of your route where cycling is forbidden – while this is often correct, in countries with increasingly favourable wangle rights like Scotland or Norway you might still be unliable to trundling there. If in doubt, try to find increasingly information, and plan an volitional option as a backup.

Ordnance Survey’s OS Maps app is a useful tool, expressly if you are out in the route and need a second opinion. It’s less platonic for planning, but using the AR Viewer to pan wideness the landscape and discover the nearest forests, coastlines, hills, mountains for inspiration is a unconfined feature, as is the 3D fly through when you plan your routes.

Know your rights

For off-road cycling, wangle to the countryside is variegated in England/Wales and Scotland. If you travel abroad, wangle rights will be variegated as well, so ownership a guidebook will be a unconfined starting point. In England and Wales bikes are permitted only on public rights of way, with the pursuit permitting for cycling:

Bridleway

Byway unshut to all traffic

Restricted byway (not for use by mechanically propelled vehicles)

There are moreover other routes with public wangle like trundling routes or permissive bridleways, withal which landowners have permitted public use. Those are not rights of way. All the whilom are liable to transpiration and may not be unmistakably specified on the ground. Please trammels with the relevant local validity for the latest information. It is trespass (currently a starchy offence, although this is under review) to trundling on footpaths in England and Wales, unless the landowner gives permission.

In Scotland the Scottish Outdoor Wangle Code gives people the right to wangle to most land including private roads, tracks and paths, for recreation and to get from place to place. This right is provisionary on people vicarial responsibly. The main exceptions to the new right are: people’s gardens, farmyards (although wangle is often possible – if in doubt ask), and land in which crops have been sown or are growing (but you can use field margins as long as you

avoid unnecessary forfeiture to the crops). You can take wangle to golf courses (except greens and tees), but only to navigate the zone and without interfering with play. At golf courses cyclists need to alimony to paths at all times. You are moreover unliable to trundling off-path, but encouraged to stave going onto wet, boggy or soft ground, and churning up the surface.

Rare species, like capercaillie in Scotland, are easily, and often unintentionally, disturbed by humans. In areas like national parks it helps to stick to trails that have been thoughtfully designed, like these gravel and bikepacking routes here in the Cairngorms National Park.

The rules for cycling on roads are less ramified and don’t differ hugely wideness the world. Motorways and big trunk roads are out of premises for cyclists. Cycling on pavements is illegal in the UK, unless it is moreover a trundling path, but other countries like Germany are much increasingly favourable towards cycling on pavements.

A route is increasingly than just cycling

Unless you are training nonflexible for an ultra endurance ride, taking time off the saddle, relieving your muscles, tendons and pressure points and enjoying the places your velocipede takes you to is as important as cycling. I could make up my own version of this, but as I have unchangingly loved the guide books from the Kennett Brothers in New Zealand, I used their workbench game illustration in my two recent books, as it’s great. They describe bikepacking as a workbench game, but the same can be unromantic to all but professional cycling. You will score points for the following:

Live and learn – trammels out interpretation panels on the side of a track, visit a museum, talk to locals or hang out with other riders. Share your own stories and requite people an opportunity to share theirs.

Chow down – supplies is increasingly than just fuel. Find your happy place at the unconfined places to eat and drink withal the way. Local communities will be much increasingly welcoming to cycling visitors if they see the positive goody from them.

Mix it up – make the most of the places of interest withal the route. Take that wee detour and use the opportunities withal the way. Some routes offer wend tours, walks, kayak tours, or unconfined places to swim.

Photo time – stopping for a nice view and a picture slows you lanugo and invites you to share it with others. That said, be mindful of what you share publicly (more on this below). If you come wideness a secret bothy or a perfect campsite, try to alimony the secret for yourself.

If you let the four points whilom influence your route planning, you’ll end up with a increasingly rounded and enjoyable ride.

Maps and books are unconfined for route inspiration

Over the years I have found unconfined inspiration in good books and maps. And while freely misogynist tourist maps, either in printed form or online, are often only of limited use for cycling, they might still have good information for planning your own route. While paying for a well-researched typesetting will set you when by a few quid, it is money well spent. Here are suggestions from six years of reading and writing books. Some of the books might be out of print, trammels out your local library or used typesetting shops.

Scotland – List on Wren here

Edward Shoote – Gravel Rides Scotland

Markus Stitz – Bikepacking Scotland

A. R. B. Haldane – The Drove Roads of Scotland

Peter D Koch-Osborne – The Scottish Glens (various books)

Scottish Rights of Way and Wangle Society – Scottish Hill Tracks

Ralph Storer – Exploring Scottish Hill Tracks

Anne Ward – Nothing to See Here: A Guide to the Hidden Joys of Scotland

Phil McKane – Scotland Mountain Biking: The Wild Trails (Vol I & II)

Geoff Allan – The Scottish Bothy Bible

Alistair Moffat – The Hidden Ways

Patrick Baker – The Unremembered Places & The Cairngorms: A Secret History

UK – List on Wren here

Emma Kingston – Bikepacking England

Markus Stitz – Unconfined British Gravel Rides

Dave Barter – Unconfined British Velocipede Rides: 40 archetype routes for road cyclists

Jack Thurston – Lost Lanes (various books)

Kathy Rodgers & Markus Stitz – Big Rides Unconfined Britain & Ireland

Harold Briercliffe – Cycling Touring Guides (various editions & books)

Mark Hudson – The Rough-Stuff Fellowship Archive: Adventures with the world’s oldest off-road cycling club & Further Adventures in Rough Stuff: The Rough-Stuff Fellowship Archive Volume 2

Hannah Collingridge – Pennine Bridleway

Hannah Reynolds & John Walsh – Britain’s Weightier Velocipede Ride: The ultimate thousand-mile cycling venture from Land’s End to John o’ Groats

Des Hannigan – Ancient Tracks

International – List on Wren here

Stefan Amato – Bikepacking: Exploring the Roads Less Cycled & Grand Bikepacking Journeys: Riding Iconic Routes virtually the World

The Kennett Brothers – Bikepacking Aotearoa

Lonely Planet – Lonely Planet Epic Velocipede Rides of Europe: explore the continent’s most thrilling cycling routes

Lonely Planet – Lonely Planet Epic Velocipede Rides of the World: explore the planet’s most thrilling cycling routes

Lonely Planet – The Bikepacker’s Guide to the World

Simon Warren – 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs of Spain: A guide to the famous cycling mountains of mainland Spain plus Mallorca and the Canary Islands

Bikeline – Eurovelo 1 Atlantic Coast Route From the fjords of Norway to the beaches of Portugal

Nicky Crowther – Archetype Mountain Velocipede Rides: Thirty of the World’s Most Spectacular Trails

Don’t overshare

The last tip ties in well with Yellow Jersey’s insurance offer. If you have cycled a route which starts and ends at your home, make sure to make use of privacy zones in Komoot – or similar offers in variegated apps, to alimony the location of these places private to you to prevent velocipede theft. But be enlightened that while privacy zones will be unromantic to all completed tours, planned tours are unaffected. So if you are planning routes, consider starting and finishing them yonder from your home or place of work. A local sideboard will be a unconfined start. This won’t be too much of an issue if you are on holiday, but it is still sensible to have a separation between your start and finish and the place you stay.

And as tempting it is to share a unconfined bothy or campsite publicly – think twice well-nigh if you might spoil it for future users. Commercially misogynist services like cafes, velocipede shops and walk-up providers will be thankful well-nigh a mention, but I alimony wild camping spots to myself.

Markus Stitz is the tragedian of Unconfined British Gravel Rides and Bikepacking Scotland. Both books are misogynist to order at markusstitz.com/books or adventurebooks.com. Most images in this blog are taken from those books. For increasingly of Markus’ routes, trammels out this collection on Komoot.

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