I am lucky enough to be planning some extra time off next summer, when a friend retires, to make (another) lap of France. I thought that bods might be interested to see it and hear how I created it perhaps.
To start with, I cheated as that is easiest. As I have lapped France before, choosing the roads to ride from maps, I thought I would do something different this time and let a third party algorithm choose the roads for me. I started by putting towns somewhat roughly but sequentially into Kurviger, to give me one single route A to B, St Malo anti-clockwise, to Calais. My friend hadn’t mentioned anything about the south east French Mediterranean coast, so I left it out. This was the result:
A 2,300 mile loop which took maybe 5 minutes to create on an iPad, it really was that simple. I then pinged it over to my friend as a suggestion. He then set about giving me where he wanted to stop each night, so inevitably the route changed, losing Verdun in the process and giving us a longish 300 mile run from Avallon at the top of the Morvan to a final hotel near Calais. I am going to persuade him to put Verdun back in, perhaps.
I then created a revised Kurviger route, plonking in just the overnight stopping places my friend had selected. This took maybe another five minutes, again on nothing more than an iPad. I then sent the Kurviger track (not the route) to BaseCamp on my Mac. This gave me the algorithm generated road-by-road directions to take. By using a mixture of BaseCamp, Open Street Maps and Google I then found the location for each of the campsites he’d chosen. I then created waypoints for each. This gave me a track (from Kurviger) and the waypoints. Then came the fun bit....
I first of all changed the colour of the track, only so it stood out. If Kurviger has one fault it is that it will sometimes select silly little detours just to put in a ‘twist’ when staying on a straighter road is actually more sensible. I needed to get rid of these. To do so I did nothing more than ask BaseCamp to give me for example a single line route A to B, St Malo to my friend’s chosen stopping of point on the coast near Quiberon. This it did. I then very easily dragged (using the route shaping tool only) the BaseCamp magenta line over the Kurviger track, missing out any little oddities that Kurviger threw up. Easy, it took maybe 10 minutes with some zooming in and out, married to some imagination as to what a French D road might well be like.
So far I have not touched a paper map at all. I have used nothing more than Kurviger and Garmin’s BaseCamp software.
I continued doing this as far as near enough Pau. My friend wanted to ride along the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean coast near Perpignan. Kurviger had given me the track across but instead I wanted to use ADAC’s suggestion of a way to go (see the sticky) I therefore looked at the ADAC map suggested route A to B and simply recreated it in BaseCamp. Bingo, one ADAC route A to B, west to east across some of the area’s most famous cols. Easy, again; maybe 10 minutes. I repeated this process across France as far as the French alps at Chambery before the run up to Avallon at the top of the Morvan. Again, Kurviger had given me its algorithm track A to B, Chambery to Avallon but, as I knew the area pretty well, I knew that there is a lot of maybe needless buggering about just to avoid motorways for the sake of it and to cross the Rhône river valley. I therefore ignored much of Kurviger’s track, simply taking the motorway instead, past Lyon and then northwards, until turning left to pick up the Kurviger trac up through the Morvan and on to Avallon. This was the first time when just a little local knowledge came in handy. Other than the ADAC map, I still haven’t touched a Michelin paper map. It has all been done for me, near enough.
This brought me all the way back to Calais, job (sort of) done; maybe an hour spent, of which much was taken up with pinpointing nothing more than the campsites. The result is:
Go to post 18, as I later amended the rote to include Verdun.
Is it finished? No. Will it be changed? Yes, as we don’t leave until mid-August 2020. Was it easy? Yes, I guess so. Did it take hours? Certainly not. Could I have done it with paper maps, instead of Kurviger’s algorithms? Yes, of course. But what I wanted to show here was that if I can do it, with nothing more than a iPad, some help from Kurviger, an ADAC sticky from UKGSer, mixed with a bit of imagination (to avoid goat tracks and buggering around on D roads by Lyon) and some help from Google plus Open Street Maps to pinpoint campsites, all in BaseCamp, anyone can. In short, the tools are all out there, anyone can give it a go. Has it missed some classic, “Mate, you have to do the D123 from A to B. 3 miles of the dog’s nuts”? Of course it has but it’s probably found some more, too. Give it a go, you really can’t break things.
I’ll put some further posts up as things develop. Next is to cheat again.... choosing some day out excursions by using the RiDE magazine ideas and some from Michelin’s 100 vires routes, all from sticky links on UKGSer. Who knows, for the first time in my life, I might not touch a Michelin map at all? I probably will, though
Richard
To start with, I cheated as that is easiest. As I have lapped France before, choosing the roads to ride from maps, I thought I would do something different this time and let a third party algorithm choose the roads for me. I started by putting towns somewhat roughly but sequentially into Kurviger, to give me one single route A to B, St Malo anti-clockwise, to Calais. My friend hadn’t mentioned anything about the south east French Mediterranean coast, so I left it out. This was the result:
A 2,300 mile loop which took maybe 5 minutes to create on an iPad, it really was that simple. I then pinged it over to my friend as a suggestion. He then set about giving me where he wanted to stop each night, so inevitably the route changed, losing Verdun in the process and giving us a longish 300 mile run from Avallon at the top of the Morvan to a final hotel near Calais. I am going to persuade him to put Verdun back in, perhaps.
I then created a revised Kurviger route, plonking in just the overnight stopping places my friend had selected. This took maybe another five minutes, again on nothing more than an iPad. I then sent the Kurviger track (not the route) to BaseCamp on my Mac. This gave me the algorithm generated road-by-road directions to take. By using a mixture of BaseCamp, Open Street Maps and Google I then found the location for each of the campsites he’d chosen. I then created waypoints for each. This gave me a track (from Kurviger) and the waypoints. Then came the fun bit....
I first of all changed the colour of the track, only so it stood out. If Kurviger has one fault it is that it will sometimes select silly little detours just to put in a ‘twist’ when staying on a straighter road is actually more sensible. I needed to get rid of these. To do so I did nothing more than ask BaseCamp to give me for example a single line route A to B, St Malo to my friend’s chosen stopping of point on the coast near Quiberon. This it did. I then very easily dragged (using the route shaping tool only) the BaseCamp magenta line over the Kurviger track, missing out any little oddities that Kurviger threw up. Easy, it took maybe 10 minutes with some zooming in and out, married to some imagination as to what a French D road might well be like.
So far I have not touched a paper map at all. I have used nothing more than Kurviger and Garmin’s BaseCamp software.
I continued doing this as far as near enough Pau. My friend wanted to ride along the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean coast near Perpignan. Kurviger had given me the track across but instead I wanted to use ADAC’s suggestion of a way to go (see the sticky) I therefore looked at the ADAC map suggested route A to B and simply recreated it in BaseCamp. Bingo, one ADAC route A to B, west to east across some of the area’s most famous cols. Easy, again; maybe 10 minutes. I repeated this process across France as far as the French alps at Chambery before the run up to Avallon at the top of the Morvan. Again, Kurviger had given me its algorithm track A to B, Chambery to Avallon but, as I knew the area pretty well, I knew that there is a lot of maybe needless buggering about just to avoid motorways for the sake of it and to cross the Rhône river valley. I therefore ignored much of Kurviger’s track, simply taking the motorway instead, past Lyon and then northwards, until turning left to pick up the Kurviger trac up through the Morvan and on to Avallon. This was the first time when just a little local knowledge came in handy. Other than the ADAC map, I still haven’t touched a Michelin paper map. It has all been done for me, near enough.
This brought me all the way back to Calais, job (sort of) done; maybe an hour spent, of which much was taken up with pinpointing nothing more than the campsites. The result is:
Go to post 18, as I later amended the rote to include Verdun.
Is it finished? No. Will it be changed? Yes, as we don’t leave until mid-August 2020. Was it easy? Yes, I guess so. Did it take hours? Certainly not. Could I have done it with paper maps, instead of Kurviger’s algorithms? Yes, of course. But what I wanted to show here was that if I can do it, with nothing more than a iPad, some help from Kurviger, an ADAC sticky from UKGSer, mixed with a bit of imagination (to avoid goat tracks and buggering around on D roads by Lyon) and some help from Google plus Open Street Maps to pinpoint campsites, all in BaseCamp, anyone can. In short, the tools are all out there, anyone can give it a go. Has it missed some classic, “Mate, you have to do the D123 from A to B. 3 miles of the dog’s nuts”? Of course it has but it’s probably found some more, too. Give it a go, you really can’t break things.
I’ll put some further posts up as things develop. Next is to cheat again.... choosing some day out excursions by using the RiDE magazine ideas and some from Michelin’s 100 vires routes, all from sticky links on UKGSer. Who knows, for the first time in my life, I might not touch a Michelin map at all? I probably will, though
Richard
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