Planning a coast to coast summer 2010 – Morecambe to Mappleton
The planning for this summer’s coast to coast – provisionally “Morecambe to Mappleton” – continues. However, a test run, to find out if we will be able to use what looked on the OS maps to be a bridleway between Weel and Meaux, stalled at a locked metal gate just outside Meaux. I had hoped to cycle this part of our west to east ride in the opposite direction today. Not quite a disaster, but it means we will have to go further north, or further south, to get across the River Hull.
Rather than turn around I decided to head to the coast and cycle the route I’d twice driven last week when I was checking out the final part of the planned ride. I do wish I’d noticed that padlocked gate. Never mind.
In Great Hatfield, about five miles away from the likely end of our C2C route this summer.
Not where I’d planned to be today (this was supposed to be the destination last weekend), but here is the rocky bit on the beach at Mappleton.
Going home. As well as using the East Yorkshire Byways I hope to plan a route that includes the Forest of Bowland, the Yorkshire Dales, the Howardian Hills and the Yorkshire Wolds. I just need a way to string them all together somehow.
I’ve also been looking again at a possible Settle to Pateley Bridge stretch mainly along a well-used ‘B’ road. But I’ll have to leave that for another day…
The plan sounds good – Morecambe to Mappleton. When you've completed planning the route, will you make it available in .gpx format? We can then add it to our GPS cycle routes. I'm thinking if we gather together a good set of routes, we can create a page for each one instead of listing each section on that routes page.
There's also Mary's Isle of Man Audax routes. I don't know about Mick and Garry's end-to-ends – maybe those too.
March 1st, 2010 at 9:41 am
Yes, I’ll make the Morecambe to Mappleton .gpx/.crs files available. And I dare say some of the riders who are meant to be doing it with me will have that sort of kit.
March 1st, 2010 at 1:07 pm
Route planning online is fun. Are you preparing a route for use on GPS, or will you rely on paper maps once you've decided which way you're going?
By the way, I never knew there was a River Hull!
March 1st, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Here is my first attempt for Morecambe to Mappleton, summer 2010:
March 1st, 2010 at 8:59 pm
Looks great. Did you view the route in Google Earth proper? From Google Earth I saved it to my desktop then converted it to .gpx. That gets round the mapmyride restriction of only registered members being able to export the route. It has 3055 waypoints (or trackpoints when converted to a track, which is more useful). You can break that down in Notepad to chunks of 500 (max) for use on a GPS. Let me know if you'd like me to email you a copy of the file as a .gpx track.
March 1st, 2010 at 10:31 pm
I’ve been a bad man again, Patrick, sorry. I plotted the route in Map My Ride, then viewed it in its version of Google Earth. I think it would have taken me too long to plan directly in Google Earth. (I’ll probably take my basic North of England map – there are simply too many OS maps covering all these areas for me to carry. I’ll no doubt make notes/directions for each section of the ride.)
Anyway, thanks for the offer of sorting out a .gpx file. However, I’m still not sure whether anyone else in the party has GPS etc. I don’t even know how many are doing the ride, actually.
Hull is properly “Kingston upon Hull” (or King’s town upon [the river] Hull as Edward I preferred), but few people call it by its Sunday best name. The river splits “Hull” in two and is the handy dividing line (although sometimes blurred) for the Rugby League teams supported by those either side of city: Hull FC (the Black and Whites) in the west; Hull KR (the Robins) in the east. Good old Wikipedia is useful for other information as always.
March 3rd, 2010 at 5:46 pm
Here is a slightly revised version of the route, avoiding the outskirts of Skipton and going through Brandsby after Easingwold. It's down to 152.5 miles:
The weather forecast for this weekend isn't too bad
August 27th, 2010 at 9:02 am
MapMyRide seem to have allowed non-registered users to view in Google Earth, which is good. That is a BIG ride in one day! From Abbeystead to Slaidburn you'll be cycling our Rivington 100 route from a couple of weeks ago. The countryside round there is lovely.
I think you might get a few showers, but a following wind. Have a great day's cycling.
August 27th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Cheers, Patrick. We're doing the ride on Sunday now rather than Saturday. The best of the weather is forecast for Monday, though. Apart from the distance I'm a bit worried about the amount of traffic on the roads with it being a bank holiday weekend, and how far we'll get before it starts to get dark. Oh, and the hills
August 27th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Sunday looks better, and the traffic will be ok I'm sure.
Out of interest I've converted your route into a .gpx file track, cut down to less than 500 trackpoints for loading on a Garmin. With fewer points than the original (over 3000) it deviates a little from the actual road but fine as a line to follow:
Morecambe-Mappleton-trk-500.txt
After copying, it has to be saved with a .gpx file suffix, not .txt.
August 27th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
I know. It's a bit feeble. But I went all lightweight and didn't take a camera. (My riding partner took some photographs.) Anyway this is my only mobile photograph of the day. A hard day.
We set off from the seafront at Morecambe at 6.15am and were blown along by a very strong breeze, but got a bit lost trying to get out of Morecambe and then Lancaster.
Thanks for that. I expect we could have saved at least an hour if we hadn't had to guess the way a few times and squint at my little map.
We were both a bit soggy by the time we reached our first stop in Settle behind schedule at 9.45. Next stop Pateley Bridge at 1.10pm, Easingwold 4.10pm and Driffield at 8.20pm (I think). Mappleton at 10.45pm (about 18 miles down the coast from Bridlington).
We managed to work in some interesting detours, so the ride ended up being just short of 159 miles, moving time 12:11:23 and average speed of 13.0mph. The wind helped, but the hills hurt. A fuller report to follow, no doubt. But not for a bit.
August 30th, 2010 at 1:01 am
LOL
Well done, and good photo! As you've had this planned for a while, it must be satisfying to have done it at last, especially squeezing it in at the very tail-end of summer.
[Added] In the dark I suppose you didn't get chance to put your toes in the sea (Julia Bradbury-style) when you got to Mappleton. I think she also carried a stone from St Bees to Robin Hood's Bay and threw it in the water.
I'd never go on a long bike ride now without a GPS. They do save you a lot of time en route. It's great having the wiggly line to follow instead of messing with maps, and breezing through towns as if you really know where you're going is great fun.
August 30th, 2010 at 7:50 am
Thats an impressive ride Chris!
August 30th, 2010 at 9:52 am
Thanks, folks. I cycled down the steep slope and onto the beach at Mappleton and nearly fell off when I reached the sand in the dark. We didn't go on to the beach at Morecambe, partly because I knew I'd get sand on my chain (I did in Mappleton). No stones, but Steve threatened to throw his bike in the sea if we ever got to the end of this ride (er, he didn't throw his bike in).
There were a number of unsigned roads along our route, our last one in the dark as we approached Little Hatfield. The road we had taken wasn't even on my large-scale North of England map and I had drawn it on earlier with a ballpoint pen. But when we reached the T junction I couldn't be sure how accurate my squiggle had been. We guessed right and were on our way with about six miles to go. A Garmin is looking like a very attractive option...
[Added later: ride report for Morecambe to Mappleton.]
September 1st, 2010 at 1:27 am