What is the point of a cycle touring route if no one knows it is there? That’s the question that Kevin Mayne has posed on his website IDoNotDespair.com. I met Kevin back in 2015 as I was cycling from Spain to Norway, staying overnight with him and his wife at their home near Waterloo in Belgium. Kevin has even name checked me in his article – What is the point of a cycle touring route if no one knows it is there? – but it’s not that which brings me to write this post.
If you listened to the most recent episode of The Cycling Europe Podcast, you will remember that I had a chat with novice long-distance cyclist Jess Odone who, in the summer of 2019, cycled from Lucca in Italy to London along the route of the EuroVelo 5. When I cycled the route back in the soggy summer of 2010, I didn’t spot one sign for the EuroVelo 5 and I was hoping that Jess would reveal that, nine years later, things had improved. Alas not… She hadn’t spotted any EuroVelo 5 signs either.
However, there is good news and it is revealed by Kevin Mayne in the following post on his website:
Brace yourself; Kevin has discovered some signs for the EuroVelo 5! Not many, but it’s a start:
Several hundred signs to go…
There are more signs on the route now, but I didn’t see any until Basel. There was a very occasional one in France, randomly placed with no discernible pattern. But none whatsoever in Belgium.
Thatโs good to hear. But a long way to go with the signage… ๐