Last week, during a family holiday, I enjoyed a few days cycling along the Canal du Midi, or, more accurately, cycling along a stretch of the Canal du Midi near Carcassonne in the south of France. The canal's full length is 240km from Tolouse to Agde (or Sète – it depends which guidebook you believe). [...]
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Denmark tour map from Google Earth The route for our forthcoming cycle tour of Denmark is now complete. Last year, we arrived at the port of Esbjerg from Harwich with no accommodation booked nor a detailed route plan. There was always room on the Danish campsites as they tend to have a small area set [...]
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Midnight on 31st March 2010 marks yet another attempt on the record for cycling round the world, or circumnavigation to use the fancy word for it. This time it's Briton Alan Bate (left), a professional racing cyclist who's aiming for a time of just 99 days. The Guinness record of 195 days is held by [...]
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The following setup is for using a handheld GPS unit as an aid to navigation on a multi-day cycle tour in Europe. There are different ways to navigate, and they differ fundamentally. Some are active, by which the GPS is 'thinking' as you travel, and others are passive, by which the GPS is only presenting [...]
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Further to a recent post titled creating a cycle route on Google Earth I'm now well into planning this May's cycle tour of Denmark. It takes a couple of hours or so to draw a whole day's path, then a couple of minutes to convert it to a .gpx track. The route so far: Esbjerg [...]
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There's not much chance of cycling in the lanes of Lancashire over the next few days. Nine inches of snow fell overnight and the temperature is below freezing. It's difficult enough to walk, let alone ride a bicycle. Cycle tourists can at least get their maps out and plan for better weather. Cyclists' maps and [...]
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Mrs Taylor has announced that she's going to walk Coast to Coast with her cousin in June 2010. So I said: "Right. I think I'll cycle Lands End to John O'Groats." She said: "Good idea." Of course she's only saying that because she knows she won't be coming. When I've mentioned it in the past [...]
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Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas day, and that you are all fit and well, and looking forward to the new year of cycling. Due to the fact and one, that I keep forgetting about – my other job – that of Mum, Wifie and chief Christmas organiser, I was FAR too busy to get [...]
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There was a time when a cyclist in my part of the world would see www and think of only one meaning: Westerdale, Wheeldale and Whitby. The Three W's was a special stamp you would claim for your Youth Hostel Association membership card – or the blanks that you'd stuff in the little plastic wallet [...]
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I planned a recent cycle tour using Ordnance Survey Explorer maps and mapmyride.com. However, I didn't have room for all the maps so I just took an AA Northern England (1 inch = 3.2 miles) map. For the most part this was fine, but as I left Castleton it wasn't clear which way I should [...]
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There may, of course, be many long distance cycle tourists who remain incognito, either because they prefer to or because they can't be bothered carrying a laptop computer to update their blogs. But the ones that do take the trouble to blog about their adventures from faraway places make it possible for mere mortals – [...]
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Cycle tourists nowadays can track (record) their route on Google Maps using a GPS-enabled mobile phone. Here's an example on John Talbot's 2009 end-to-end tour in which tracking data was automatically uploaded every 5 minutes whilst he was moving. However, to do a whole day's logging with the phone switched on is battery-intensive and may [...]
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CycleSeven 2009-2012
