To Those who Came Before Us...
Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due
The title of our journal is a not-so-original mash up of puns .... but it could have been worse. Much worse.
As I mentioned in the first post, we spent a lot of time over the last 4 years following other folks adventures. The Pyrenees were already on our radar but we kept seeing these amazing rides through one French gorge after another. After our Salzkammergut ride in May of 2022, where we literally copied the Team Anderson GPS routes, I started to do the same for these amazing gorge rides. While I was at it, I did the same for the Pyrenees. With a little stitching together, our plan and ride emerged.
It dawned on me that I hadn't 'created' our own tour, I had more or less put together a "K-Tel Greatest Hits" tour of other people's rides with the only coherent theme being 'that looks cool'. My next thought was, 'Oh wouldn't it be great if I named the journal K-Tel's Blazing Hits of 2022 ', and it just got worse from there.
I've spared you this as a title, however this K-Tel theme has stuck in the quagmire that is my brain, so bear with me.
Although this is a collection of many people's rides, they are all rooted in Rachael and Scott Anderson's oeuvre (someone should put out a new cover of Geoff Mack's "I've Been Everywhere" with where Team Anderson has travelled!).
It starts with TA's 2015 French Alps Tour. The original recordings of this classic have been lost in time, but the Andersons provided an updated 'acoustic' version recently on Cycle Blaze, acoustic in that there were no electronic maps to copy!
However, Jacquie Gaudet put together a great cover of the TA original in 2017, Geneva South Through the Western Alps. This is the version we will be following.
After this we've got a few of our own 'originals' as we make our way through the Nesque gorge before we pick up Pat and Scott Fennwick's Ardeche recordings. We're going to be doing this in reverse though so we'll be 'on watch' for any hidden Paul McCartney messages.
We then hit the mother lode .... the Tarn, Cele & Lot recordings. This is like finding Dylan's basement tapes. Spoiled for choice we've plucked 2022 rides from Rachael and Scott (of course), Susan Carpenter, Ann and Steve Maher-Weary and we finish off in Racamadour with a Jacquie Gaudet original from 2019.
We've then got a few more original tracks as we make our way into Spain and then pick up some of the tracks from Rachael & Scotts 2017 classic "Bilbao to Sete" before finishing off in Barcelona with a compilation of Maher-Weary and Gaudet recordings. This last compilation will largely be in reverse of the originals so we'll once again be on the look-out for hidden messages while we spin the discs backwards.
I know I've taken this record theme too far, but in all seriousness we're incredibly grateful for this amazing community, and in particular to the folks with links above, who provide so much inspiration and resources for those who come later. Hopefully our contributions over the next 10 weeks will help, in some small way, someone else's journey.
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9 months ago
I see there's a forum going on mapping/routing software. Rather than go on at length on how we plan our routes, the post that Rich Frasier put in sums up almost exactly how we do our route planning.
As for your specific question on how we chose our route from Girona to Sant Feliu, there is a well marked /signposted Via Verde (VV2) that runs from Girona to Sant Feliu and it shows up on OSM Cycle. Where these coincide with where we want to go, we just get on them and ride with no specific route planning. We sometimes 'force' a route along these already designated routes by picking way points along the designated route, but only to ensure that Kirsten and I are following the same route if by chance we get separated.
The other thing we do, which does not seem to be that common, is to simply use our planned routes and maps as 'dumb' maps (albeit electronic versions). We never use turn cues or any real time guidance, that's what our eyes and brains are for.
We export gpx tracks from RWGPS to the Pocket Earth app on our phones and then just use it as a regular map. We find Pocket Earth extremely useful (it's a iOS version of OSMAND which I believe you have used). We have all the countries we plan on being in downloaded on our phones, including topo maps, and we find the map rendering of Pocket Earth immeasurably better than Google maps, or most other mapping packages. You can actually see the roads with 60+ year old eyes (not varying shades of light grey on light grey that Google seems to favour - I'll stop there).
Anyway, we just use Pocket Earth as an 'electronic / scalable' hard copy map, and our position on the map is shown at all times making it easy to see where you are and where you want to go.
We also find that once you've been in a country for a while you get a good feel for what the roads are like so you can make route deviations when you want with some confidence. The topo maps are useful for this too as designated bike routes sometimes go through town centres, which are often at the top of hills, and if you don't want to or need to go into such towns, you can pretty easily see if there is anther road that bypasses the town without going up a hill and then rejoins your marked route a few km's later.
Again, we use our eyes and brains rather than have a mellifluous electronic voice tell us where to turn.
Long answer to the short question I know.
9 months ago