[Closed] The dark side!!

London, Cardiff, Edinburgh......Belfast ?

Wot have I missed?

Clitheroe.

Just realised it was a long time since I did geography, should have said GB which would include Dublin.

IIRC ireland [ at least that bit] is free from the yoke of imperalism- you can add politics to your list of poor subjects 😉

School was a very short lived time!

Junkyard I have no idea what you just said 🙁

5 capital of the British Isles will do 🙂

Good project tho.

If I were you I'd do it on a hybrid or a MTB with semi slicks. A very good place to start looking for a route would be here:
[url= http://www.sustrans.org.uk/ncn/map ]sustrans map[/url]

good luck, enjoy.

making me wish I sat my 11 plus now!!

dublin is the capital of ireland which is another country and not in GB

Any how guys, thanks for all your help 😯

Jekkyl thanks, I have looked on Sustrans, some of these routes use cycle paths. The event is time critical (5 days) and we do have the luxury of safety bikes and vehicles for the busier roads.

Route help.. well, there are websites for tourers and such, but to be honest you might as well just look at a map. I presume you're starting from Cardiff, going by your username? You could make a loop of it for not much more distance I reckon. Cardiff to London, then Edinburgh, across to Belfast (Glasgow is it?) then Dublin, ferry back to Wales via Holyhead.

Use bing.com/maps for unlimited online OS maps. I can't recommend much personally, but getting to London should be ok, from Bristol eastwards is lovely rolling countryside all the way to Reading. You could opt for NCN route 4 which goes from London to near Cardiff. Not sure about getting to Edinburgh though, [url= http://www.londonedinburghlondon.com/route ]but you could try this.[/url]

Molgrips cheers for that, spot on with the route. We are looking for the shortest rideable distances to keep time in saddle down.

sustrans is a good call, as is strava heat map.

Bikeroute toaster will let you save routes as GPX. You have variety of options including OSM cycling which is quite good.

Google where's the path for a website that lets you run two maps side by side. You can then use a standard road map and satellite so you can see the road in question.

Edinburgh to Newcastle can be covered on the coast and castles. From Newcastle there are many routes west which you could probably head south on.

I didn't know you wanted the shortest.. don't take the NCNs then!

A4 is probably your best bet for most of the Cardiff to London bit.

Join the ctc and get access to all their mapping and route planning.

jonba, some good ideas there. One of the team is pretty good with the type of suggestions you make so will pass this to him.Thanks

Check out the CTC - they will probably be able to advise you on that kind of thing - though they prefer to do it in longer than 5 days....

Edit: or read the post 2 up from here. D'oh!

Just realised it was a long time since I did geography, should have said GB which would include Dublin.

Err, no. If you had said British Isles then that would have included Dublin. Great Britain only has three capitals.

And will this be before or after the Scottish Independence referendum?

You guys are good

If you're after quickest you do realise you can legally cycle on dual carriageways, wether you'd want to or not is a different matter.

I plotted a Celtic Capitals route that I still plan to do. It only covers Cardiff-Dublin-Belfast-Edinburgh though. The ferry to Troon makes the section to Edinburgh pretty straightforward/short/quick.

I regularly see people cycling on the A168 / A19 dual carriageway between Dishforth & Middlesbrough. Often time triallers. Wouldn't be my choice of route but I suppose it's better than the A1 (or A1M, which, being a motorway, is not allowed)

Great Britain is the big island & all the associated tiny islands that go with it.
UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain (see above) and Northern Ireland.
Eire or The Republic of Ireland is indeed an independant country.
together they make up The British Isles - although some of the more militant Irish might take offence at the use of the word 'British'

So shall we just call them "that overcrowded group of islands north of France" ?

John - how could you forget the Isle of Man?

Geography lesson:

Scotroutes, did you plan yours using the shortest distances?

Shermer75 I switched off when I saw the word lesson and started staring out the window haha..

I played around with the route from Cardiff to Fishguard but just let Garmin Basecamp decide the route through Ireland. The legs I have are;

Cardiff-Fishguard - 170km
Rosslare-Dublin - 164km
Dublin-Belfast - 176km
Troon-Edinbugh - 121km

My plan was to do that in 4 days but ferry times make it a bit problematic.

damn, I knew I would've missed something. or maybe it comes under "all of the tiny islands associated with it" ?

can I stick to my original plan of "the overcrowded islands north of France" ?

scotroutes, we are doing Dublin to Holyhead to miss out on the leg to Rosslare. We are hoping to boat from as close to Glasgow as we can on a previous challenge we used a private boat to support us over the water to Belfast.

Cool. Depends what your aim is I guess. With no "challenge" aspect in mind, I'm looking to get a decent look at Eire. I may also ditch the Troon idea and head for Stranraer too.

Plan is to get a group of us between the 5 cities in 5 days and raise a load of money for charity.
scotroutes your idea sounds great no clock to watch, thanks for the advice.