At least for me, cycling on the road, or off road, is about adventure, fun and discovering new places. Many people associate road riding with pollution, danger, busy roads and honking cars. Or doing another lap of Lake Zug on those busy main roads! Well it doesn't have to be like this....
As well as an MTB paradise, CH, or at least the ZH / ZG area, is full of cycle tracks, quite roads and asphalted agricultural lanes which are perfect for road riding. An absolute classic from Baar is along the Reus up to Bremgarten where you can ride quite lanes or bike paths nearly the whole of the 50km route. And there are many more such examples especially if you are prepared to ride a little gravel.
As humans have a tendency to repeat behaviour and stick to what they know, I have started route planning a little differently. Rather than just 'follow my nose' and going riding, I plan a route using Google maps and follow this. This 'forces' me to usually take a non standard route. It is dead easy and brings variety into my rides:
* Pick a destination as far as you want to go
* Use the navigate function in Google and click the cycling icon
* Add a couple of 'VIA's on the way there and different ones on the way back and allow Google to build the route.
* Copy the URL and use https://mapstogpx.com/ to create a GPX track.
This will certainly not work in all areas of the world but here I have had a lot of fun with it and some great rides. It is not always 100% (but that would be boring!) - my last ride had a steep gravel descent and took me up a flight of stairs. Otherwise it was excellent and 90% out of the traffic.
If you are feeling more adventurous, you can use the hiking function...I find this also works for 'road' rides as the trails on there are mainly just gravel.
Anyone else have road ride planning tips?
At least for me, cycling on the road, or off road, is about adventure, fun and discovering new places. Many people associate road riding with pollution, danger, busy roads and honking cars. Or doing another lap of Lake Zug on those busy main roads! Well it doesn't have to be like this....
I recently did this and then copied the route over to a course on my Garmin watch. Usually, I just ride and follow my nose when going out for a spin, but this time I needed to get somewhere so used Iain idea and then transferred to my watch. It made navigation really easy and took me along a route that I otherwise may not have ridden. (Ironically along the Reuss towards Bremgarten!)
Cheers for the tip Iain.
Swiss Outdoor Sports events for an international audience
Some great tips. I can also recommend https://www.naviki.org/ which is a mapping application to which Kanton Zug has contributed maps and trails to the project. You can easily plan point to point or round trips from a fixed point and it suggests routes based on what kind of bike you are riding.
The app works good but you have to pay for the different maps where using your PC/Mac. I've used it both for MTB and road which help discover new routes.
Hope this helps.
Brian