Maps: Even Going in Circles Takes Some Guidance

April 6, 2013

We are big fans of the Bikeline map books. Not only are they specifically designed for cycling - leading you along bikeways as much as possible - but they accurately show where camping and other needed services can be found. Most importantly, they are linear. When you get a general road map, it will be a big rectangle, and your route will necessarily use on a small part of it. Then when you pass out of that rectangle, you need to buy the next one on. Over 4 or 5 thousand kilometers, that's a lot of maps!

Stanfords, in England, is a good source for information about Bikeline books. The "grid map" on this page contains links that show all the Bikeline routes by country.

On the other hand, Bikeline is not perfect. For one thing, most are in German. And well over half the pages is taken up with what we are sure is wonderful description of the sights along the way, plus the tricky turns of the route that you should be sure to watch out for. So after we learn German, it will be fine, but right now, it's dead weight.

We have two weapons to combat this dead weight problem. The first is a scanner and colour printer. With this we copy only the maps, and when alternative routes are offered, only the maps for the route we have chosen. The second weapon is Sandra, our German friend. Sandra reads the books and finds the critical bits.

What we really need is a way to take Sandra on the ride! Unfortunately we also need her to stay home and watch the farm. Too bad that scanner and printer can not copy her. (Maybe we need one of those new 3D printers).

Sandra offers some sage route advice to Dodie in our kitchen "headquarters".

Since Bikeline routes do not go everywhere, we of course need other bike route books, and some traditional maps. We have found CartoVelo to be a good source, particularly for France.

Hooray, a packet from CartoVelo! Last week, this lucky envelope was on the Atlantic coast of France. We are jealous.

Maps books to take us down the Rhone and then along canals to Bordeaux.

According to this book, there is scads of camping near Agde! This is on the Mediterranean, half way from Avignon to Toulouse. We just hope some of these are open by the time we get that far south.

Ultimately, the best for us is to follow routes that are actually signposted out there on the real streets. In Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and most other countries of Europe, there are zillions of these. In fact, a favourite photo of cycle tourists is of some signpost with five or ten or more bike route signs pointing in various directions.

While we know that these signs are going to be there, we feel happier if we know the name of a route we are going to follow in advance. There are so many national and other websites floating around, with information of all types, that it can be dizzying. On the other hand, trying to find concrete information about a given route, Eurovelo 3, for example, can end up being a challenge.

The Eurovelo routes in France seem straight forward, but except for Eurovelo 6, paper maps do not seem to exist.

France also has some major national routes. Again, paper maps are not commonly available.

Open cycle map is a good resource for this, but not for paper maps to take along. See the next page for what we found out about offline maps to take in your smartphone or tablet.

With about two months to go, we feel we both have lots of time to get ready for Idaho (July 1) and Amsterdam (July 19), and at the same time we are just gently starting to freak because we are not ready. The circle route still looks like a pile of unorganized maps:

A loose circle of map books helps to describe our planned trip. But, there is no way we can carry all these with us!

The WeeHoo contraption is still in the "lab" getting perfected:

A WeeHoo sits in the sunroom with the Fridays as we figure out how to strap all the gear for us and two kids onto the contraption.

And the bags are pretending to be packed, but in reality are up in the air:

These bags look deceptively ready to go, but their exact contents is still very much up for review.

The dining room table is not well set up at this point for doing any actual dining.

Of course, when the time comes we will be ready. The trick will be to calmly plan our way through the needed steps. Waaaaahhh!

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