North Sea Cycle Route.
We’re doing about —————————— this much. It’s all flat.
Hurray! Holiday time approaches! We’ve decided on the Netherlands-Germany-bit-of-Denmark section of the NSCR. It’s a 6,000 kilometre route from Scotland-Harwich, Belgium-Denmark + Norway, Sweden, across the sea to the Shetlands and back to Scotland. Some people do it all in one heroic go, others do a bit on their holiday, then come back and do a bit more.
Billed on their website (www.northsea-cycle.com) as ‘the world’s longest cycle route’ going through 7 countries etc.
Really though, I want to write about how I plan a route. It’s me that plans. Grimsdale only gets into the detail the week before, in his role as bike mechanic. I’m the routemeister to begin with. I LOVE planning the route, a discovery I made 15 years ago when I researched and plotted our progress across France on the first ever biggie: Roscoff-Santander. I spent evenings and weekends through winter poring over the French road atlas wondering if we could do it and following a route provided by a couple of CTC (Cycle Touring Club) members.
Since then, we generally make a joint decision about where to go. I plan the route and organise the holiday. Grimsdale sorts out the bikes and, once on the road, he takes over as map supremo.
So, here’s where we’re up to so far. Since this is a 2-week and a bit summer holiday, first I have to look at a rough route we might be able to complete in the time, fix the start and end points (though not necessarily in that order), then work out a rough, but realistically accurate route for the distance we think we can do.
First thing to sort out: How to get 2 bikes fully loaded for touring with camping gear to the start point of a route, then how to get everything back home again? Can we reasonably manage the distance in between in the time available? Umm, maybe …. bit scarey.
