Building a route from an idea....

How did I come up with this route?

I have ridden long distance cycle routes in the UK for the past 3 years - Pennine Cycle Way, Lon Las Cymru and the Rebellion Way. I have also progressively extended the annual Constellation Group ride, adding an addition 900 miles to the 240 mile group event last year. At the end of last year I was thinking of trips for this year and the Rhine Cycle Route (Eurovelo 15) grabbed my attention, this is a 1400km route between the Rhine's source in the Swiss Alps and the exit into the North Sea.

That was step 1, after deciding to ride downhill the next step was how to get to the alpine Rhine source. I looked at a train journey, this was proving to be complicated with a number of changes and stretching into a second day of travel. Another option was to take the train to somewhere like Geneva, but this was still complicated. Another option was to cycle to Geneva and to then follow the Rhone upstream (Eurovelo 17 follows the Rhone). Sources of both the Rhone and Rhine are not that far apart. If you've seen my "Rivers and Mountains" post, you know which way this is going.

The route to Geneva sees me riding from Dieppe, following Avenue Verte to Paris, then following the Seine to the Dijon area. To get to Geneva then involves me crossing the Jura Mountains.

The final step in this high level planning is the UK segments. From home, I will ride to the Dorking area to my sister's house, and then onward to Newhaven on the following day. The homeward UK segments sees me riding from Hull ferry terminal to Grantham where I will spend the night with friends before the final day of riding back home.

Rivers and Mountains Tour

 

In my last post I invited you to come back soon for details of the longer solo ride that I have planned for 2025.

The image to the right gives an indication of the route, I'm still finalising plans but at this scale you wouldn't notice any small changes.

From home I will head for the south coast port of Newhaven, board a cross channel evening ferry to Dieppe. Avenue Verte will take me to Paris from where I'll follow the Seine to the Dijon area before heading over the Jura mountains and into Geneva. The Rhone will lead me to its source high up in the Swiss Alps. Not far from here is the source of the Rhine which will lead me downstream to the North Sea. An overnight ferry crossing will take me back to the UK and the final stage of the ride back home.

Rivers and Mountains? You may have noticed these geographical elements in the route description above - rivers Seine, Rhone and Rhine, along with mountains in the form of Jura and Alps..

Subject to final planning, I expect the total distance to be in the region of 1,900 miles or 3,000 km if you prefer the larger metric measure. This will be over a 22 day period. Some very rough estimates have me turning the pedals half a million times whilst consuming 100,000 calories. For those of you into counting steps, bear in mind a pedal rotation is 2 "steps", both legs being involved which means I'll be doing around a million cycling steps.

In a later post I aim to give an overview of how I formulated this route, come back soon!

2025 Fundraising Rides

 The Constellation group ride in 2025 is of a different format, previous years have seen us covering 200-240 miles over 3 days, this year it will be a single day ride of 75 or 100 miles. With the change in format, I have decided to change my approach also, splitting my fundraising into 2 rides - a long solo ride and a simple extension to the group ride.

Come back soon for an introduction to the longer solo ride ....