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Hi To all and hope you can help with some local knowledge.
Due to be involved in a charity ride from Bristol down to Salcombe in Devon, over the course of 3 days. Good bunch of lads, much beer drinking but generally a bit slow. Given we are starting lunchtime at the Zoo and will be going over the Clifton Bridge I initially thought I could go play at Ashton Court on the way but this has developed into doing a full off road version of the route for those who want to join! Most will be on hardtails and not that great a skill level but still want to have a laugh.
Route does need to go through Cheddar, Bridgewater and down to Newton Abbot area on way - tyhinking Ashton Court, mendips, across the levels and then Quantocks, Exmoor and Down Dartmoor, though could be a bit ambitious on the second day! MTB epics did have a route for an event but not sure if that is available on GPX.
Any local knowledge and ideas of linking up areas would be great!
There's a lot of ground there that'll be roadwork unless you want to do about 350-400km...
Quantocks, exmoor, dartmoor, starting at Taunton via minehead and mostly off-road is 140miles with 15,000ft of climbing. I'm planning to do it in a couple of weekends time over 2 long days.
I think you might need to be a little more realistic given your self description...
figured second day was ambitious but could still do with advice for the Bristol down to Bridgewater part. Second day might aim to look at routes south of Taunton in Blackdown hills down to Woodbury common. Any one got any routes in the area?
once you get to bridgwater you can take the canal path from there to taunton from which its a climb up the quantocks.
you could come off the canal part way and hit the quantocks from the north petherton area
weston to burnham-on-sea although on sustrans is 7 miles all on beach, and is a hard going, and sand is a bike killer (bitch to ride).
if you had a rough map it'd be easier to suggest?
I've been struggling to find some good stuff in the Blackdown hills area - Even a segment explore in Strava was returning only road bike type segments. So not sure it's the best detour.
that's because there really isn't much. and what is there is really boggy in all but the driest of dry spells.
Don't even attempt the Blackdowns, I've had some of my muddiest rides on the Blackdowns in July in high 20s temperatures. Most bridleways seem to have been diverted or blocked for agriculture and the ones you can find have long road sections to get to/from them with no obvious route through.
Detouring across quantocks - exmoor - dartmoor would be an amazing route but a huge detour and you would want a lot more time to do it in and a good set of legs I'd imagine.
I've been struggling to find some good stuff in the Blackdown hills area - Even a segment explore in Strava was returning only road bike type segments. So not sure it's the best detour.
look in to the "herepath" and there are jumpy trails in the orchard portman area, but really, probs not worth it
There's a charity ride that is off-road from Bristol to Lands End, Singletrack wrote about it earlier and there's even a map of the entire route you can hopefully get enough detail from to plan your own:
http://singletrackworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/event-6-day-epic-from-bristol-to-lands-end/