Just recieved the following email. Rob’s comments in red, my comments in blue:
Hi Andrew
Just been looking at your blog which is very helpful and inspiring. Thanks!
Me and my girlfriend are planning to cycle London to Istanbul in May (for our honeymoon) and are considering route options. Good idea.
I am currently thinking of following route 5 as far as Milan then heading over to Venice, catching a ferry to Istria in Croatia, then cycling down the Dalmation coast. That should be spectacular – I’m jealous already. We will potentially then catch the ferry back over to southern Italy and spend a couple of months there WOOFING. Err… you’ll have to explain that one Rob, sorry. I am assuming you are not a dog. Then heading back over to Greece and cycling to Istanbul potentially whilst doing a bit of island hopping. I’m still jealous. Will probably take about 5 months in total.
Looking at the Eurovelo routes they seem to do a lot of off roading. Interesting comment: I haven’t found anything sufficiently detailed yet to indicate one way or the other. The official definition (well, from Wikipedia) of a Eurovelo route is as follows: “For a route to be part of EuroVelo it must:have no gradient above 6%, be wide enough for two cyclists, have an average of no more than 1,000 motorised vehicles a day, be sealed for 80% of its length”. Even that doesn’t really smack of “off-roading”. I’m assuming that it will be able to cycle the EV5 using a normal touring bike rather than a mountain bike. I won’t be folllowing the bits that are off road (if they exist) as I only have a maximum of six weeks to make my trip. I’d be interested in knowing more about why you think it involves alot of off road cycling.
Was planning to try and stick to minor roads and paved cycle paths (avoiding non paved surfaces).
Do you intend to do something similar? Yes – see comments above.
Is there anywhere you can download these routes on GPS? That would be incredibly helpful! Pity you didn’t join the online chat discussion last Sunday at 8pm! We were discussing GPS. An American guy called George Jemmott is really into the whole GPS thing. He is planning on doing some GPS mapping of parts of the route (from Milan to Calais – very useful for you!) in March / April 2010. Have a look at his website for more information. I haven’t found any GPS details yet. Have you tried looking at the maps on the CTC website? You do have to be a member to look at them. Perhaps I should have a look for you (I joined them last year).
Also is it worth buying the eurovelo route maps? No. As far as I know there isn’t one for EV5. There is a general overview map for the whole EV network which you can also see on the European Cyclists’ Federation website. You can read the description of the Eurovelo 5 route on this website – I copied it from the back of the EV map!
Would be good to hear from you. Hope you found the above useful. Keep in touch. Would love to know how you get on. And what the hell is “Woofing”?
Best wishes
Same to you
Rob
Andrew
Categories: Cycling
Indeed! WWOOFing (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms)ing is awesome. Work while you travel, see http://www.wwoof.org/Sorry my website is a mess at the moment; it's not really ready for the public yet, as I just made it a week or two ago and have been busy with work since then, and I don't know how to use Drupal very well yet… but it will get there.Re: offroading, yes. EV6 ran my friend Frances and me right into a lake at one point, after a half-day of slogging through mud. That said, the German and French sections were way easier than the Czech and Hungarian sections (generally speaking – some exceptions apply). The EV routes may *aspire* to those qualifications Andrew mentioned above, but they're not there yet.Re: EV5, I plan (as of today!) to leave Milano around the beginning of March and set off with a GPS to really document EV5 as well as I can. I plan to back-track and search perpendicularly as much as need be to find the track, doing more like 20 or 30 Km per day, rather than the typical 80 or 100 for cycle touring. Plans for documentation are still developing (and open to suggestion!) but include as a *minumum* a continuous GPS route that is *serviceable* if not perfect. Ideally it'd also have a nice narration of each section, maybe a report like this one of EV7, maybe photos of easy-to miss turns, etc. Ideally. I'll see as I practice what is actually feasible inside of 6-8 weeks.I would *love* to be of help to your honeymoon.I'm available on g-mail chat (gjemmott) and am happy to log into Skype or some other service if you like. e-mail works well, too.Cheers,~George