Hi, we're Pam and Gilbert of 2 Bikes 4 Adventure.
In a previous video, we discussed our main criteria when planning where to go
next on our cycling adventures. They are weather, elevation gain, goal,
infrastructure and cost. In this video, we discuss in more detail the research
we do for our cycle tours and the tools we use before and during
our trips. Check the description for links to
everything we mention. Depending on the time of year we plan to
travel, we identify which areas of the world have ideal weather,
between 20 and 25 celsius. The blog article
Around the World in Perfect Weather is a good place to start.
Once we've established the country or area we want to visit,
our next step is to look for existing national, regional or local routes
using OpenCycleMap or OpenStreetMap with the cycle map layer.
This map provides cycling information such as bike lanes and hill contouring.
We get even more inspiration by looking to see where other traveling
cyclists go in the region. We search for routes that bike tour
operators are promoting. If they're able to attract customers
it's because people find it worth the trip.
Furthermore, the route will likely have accommodations and services for
travelers. We planned most of our Hiroshima to
Tokyo route by checking where commercial bike companies go.
We're particularly interested in the following information: difficulty level,
we aim for easy to medium; itinerary including daily cycling distances and
stop locations; and points of interest along the route.
Very popular bike routes may have dedicated books, maps or websites.
Sites like Eurovelo for Europe or Adventurecycling.org for the U.S.
provide numerous suggestions for long distance travels.
Although we would not bring a heavy guidebook on our trip, we may bring a pdf version
or buy one to study before we leave.
We used this approach for several of our trips,
including Velodyssee, the Danube and Berlin to Copenhagen.
The Bikeline series from Germany is particularly well made and also comes
with a gps downloadable route, but some titles are only available in
German.
For specific locations, for example to find out how to cycle from
Chile's Santiago international airport to downtown,
we use Bikemap. We also use it for countries where OpenCycleMap has
little coverage. The elevation information is
particularly valuable.
Once we determine our route, we tailor it based on available accommodation.
We search Booking.com, Hotels.com and Airbnb.com
to find affordable rooms, preferably with kitchen facilities.
We aim to limit our search to 10 kilometers on either side of the planned
route and not more than 100 kilometers between
each stop.
If Google Street Map is available for our selected destinations,
we like to take a peek at the road condition. Is it paved?
Is there a shoulder and how wide is it? How does the road out of
the airport look?
If the distance between two cities is too great for the time available
or we want to bypass a large elevation gain or quickly traverse a body of water
we look for alternative transport such as bus,
train or ferry. We use a site like Rome2Rio to get schedule and price
information, although we usually book directly from
the railroad or bus website. We also prefer to have a confirmed
ticket rather than find on the day of departure that it is fully booked.
Another issue may be that certain passes cannot be purchased locally,
such as Japan's one-week Rail Pass.
For offline navigation, we use the Pocket Earth app available for iOS and Android.
We download the maps we need using wi-fi. If your phone has limited
free space, you may want to download only the specific regions you
need instead of an entire country. In addition to our smartphones, we still
use a dedicated GPS for real-time navigation while cycling.
While this is neither the most up-to-date nor user-friendly device
and is not specifically dedicated for cycle touring,
its low battery consumption, robustness and offline capability
make it a reliable companion especially when cycling in a downpour.
We download route and accommodation locations to our GPS using the Garmin
Basecamp app. Garmin compatible country maps based
on OpenStreetMap are available for free on the web.
We've selected our destination based on favorable weather
and our direction to take advantage of the prevailing winds,
but we can't avoid occasional bad weather. To get the most up-to-date
weather conditions including maps with radar and satellite
information, we rely on the Windy app. It's the next
best thing to cycling with a meteorologist,
although it requires wi-fi or phone service.
We often bring a drone to capture aerial footage and we find the UAVForecast
app very useful. It displays various parameters to let us know if conditions
are safe and legal to fly. This is a lot of
research but it's a fun challenge for us. And in spite of all this planning, we
know that surprises and problems can and will arise on the road.
We've experienced illness, severe weather, road closures and other
issues that have led us to rejig our route on the fly.
There may also be more pleasant
discoveries that we want to spontaneously follow up on.
We love that the portability of our Bromptons enables us to be flexible
enough to deal with these possibilities. We hope that all of us are soon planning
some exciting cycling adventures.