As a bit of a throwback to the halcyon days of yore when we used to have quite a lot of cycling chat on the boards back in the days of that Otter bloke from across a pond.

http://richmondrider.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/just-riding-home-for-the-weekend/

Had a few days of leave to use up at work before the end of this month and with the better half sadly at work came up with a cunning plan to ride the 210 miles home from Richmond to Warrington as a bit of an adventure.

hell of a ride... my legs are like jelly after 5 miles if I pedal

It's not the sort of thing I'd usually read but actually that was quite interesting, seems like the cycle network isn't that great or well mapped for attempting things like this though.

Also, what was the guy at the second stopover doing to your bike that caused you to go back? I didn't understand that part. Good looking steak

I definitely wouldn't rely on the cycle network without maps / gps for this sort of thing - plus I was using a mixture of that in part plus good cycling roads.

The bike part thing was odd - I came back after dinner and the owner + some guy were trying to turn my bike light off having claimed it turned itself on. When I left in the morning clearly in the process they'd removed part of the bracket as part of this bizarre escapade which I don't notice until I was a mile down the round. Very strange tbh.

Hadn't heard of bikeroutetoaster, is it any good? Would be handy to have a good route planner for cycling around down here that avoids the lethal roads?

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Bikeroutetoaster is definitely good for building your own routes click by click if you vaguely know the area / roads and want to build a circular or out / back route. CycleStreets is pretty good for point-to-point - particularly in urban scenarios where its nice to know about number of traffic lights / junctions etc.

I just tried cycle street for home to work. The proposed route is interesting, same kind of way that I go anyway, but instead of main roads it goes residential. I appreciate they're slower and less lethal, but at the same time they also have cars parked either side creating bottle necks and increasing the chances of near misses and minor accidents Imho!

Regardless, I'll have to see if I can transfer routes to my garmin fenix, and maybe try venturing further afield.  Overall I'd feel better knowing I'm not going to have to go on a carriage way at some point!

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Having ridden on the a470 and a40 I love carriageways. They normally have a second lane which means folk just overtake you normally none of this squeezing past bollocks.

Once you're used to the speed of traffic going by I preferred them.

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