Cotteswold 200 / 100

Hiya

Thinking about doing the Cotteswolds 200 or 100 next year. Bikepacking. Give it a few days.

https://www.mtbepicsuk.co.uk/routes/

Ride with GPS says it is a lot of paved roads.

Is that accurate? The 100k one is 62k of Roads!

Anyone actually ridden it.

Pretty sure thems in lumpy miles, not kilometres.

60% on road is about 30% of your time on road, so that’s fine imo. I live nearby, rode the northern half / 100 a couple of summers ago. It could be better in some ways for me personally but it’s a good ‘opener’ to the area and an ideal bikepacking route really. It uses a mix of quite rough or steep descents (relatively, for around here) and miles on the lanes so it makes bike suitability more tricky. I was happy on a rigid 29er.

Also, might be worth checking the effect of the A417 Missing Link roadworks on the route. It’s a huge project and I imagine it will impact the route around Birdlip (south of Cheltenham) until late 2026/early 2027.

Fair point re: Miles vs Metric!

Hmmmmn, not sure if I want to do that much on road. Taking a MTB rather than a gravel bike.

You’d be better going into Wales perhaps then, or making your own route. There’s plenty of off-road in the area but usual story – not all legal to be published as a route like the CW200. Also hard to link up into long route and keep the off-road % up – my own 100 miler here that covers a lot of the same ground as the N half of the CW200 is about 50/50 on/off road.

To be pedantic, ride With GPS says paved, not paved roads.

So not everything marked as paved on their site is a public road open to all vehicles.

For example, the stretch from Stroud to Nailsworth is marked as paved. This is correct but it’s a cycle path, not a public road.

Hmmmmn, not sure if I want to do that much on road. Taking a MTB rather than a gravel bike.

As James pointed out though, the road sections will be over far quicker. When you plug stuff into RideWithGPS or Kommot it always looks far more dull than the reality.

200miles off-road with bikepacking gear and 5200m of climbing in the Cotswolds would be a very tough ride, especially if the combination of cotswolds + heavy gear means a lot of climbing would become pushing.

Just a word of advice, do not even consider this in the winter, unless prolonged negative temperatures have allowed the mud to freeze.

There is another route option in the area:

https://www.escapism.bike/routes/tour-of-the-cotswolds?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaYzDODyaKc6qXkQlfI5fiGyY4j4V4_XbHc3kk2Erkk5Nt5-pQhZX0zqpmw_aem_oLDYorIYLod0AfKKjwXR9g

Both of those routes go past my front door in Ebrington.  I half expect to see a tent pitched up in my front garden, especially when the MTBevents 200 is on.  I know,  I’m lucky and it is lumpy around here.

The road sections around my house north of Stroud could easily be transferred on to bridalways, but it would make a substantially more difficult route and many gravel bikes would struggle as Cotswold stone doesn’t make good gravel.