Initial Planning | The Rough Route

I have always found planning a route fairly easy, from trips into Europe to ride outs for work; I know the point where I will be starting, and I know where I will finish. However, unlike a normal ride this one has 93 points (counties) to ride to and this I think this will make the ride easier to plan as I am no longer riding between two points and trying to take the best route. I will be using a dot-to-dot method, ticking off each county as I go.

My initial plan had a slight hiccup in it - one of the initial goals for Running the Standard (RtS) was to ride to ALL the counties in Great Britain, however, there seems to be no real answer to how many counties there actually are! Maps and councils seem to disagree so this meant deciding on the counties I would be using and making decisions that could have major consequences to the next stage of planning. For example, Yorkshire - is it one county or is it 4: (North, East, South and West Yorkshire.)? Click here to find out where I drew the lines!

When I finally came to the end of the ‘what is a county’ conundrum I set out making a rough plan, from county centre point to centre point, not really taking roads, cities, or general geography into account.

(Map copyright: Google, 2020) (Squiggles copyright: Wookiee, just after dinner) 

From this level of planning I can only see a few points where I would need to re-trace my steps – for example Devon, as Cornwall is only connected to Great Britain via Devon (Fact: cream then jam on a scone!).

I am lucky through the middle section of the England as the counties run predominantly north to south. This will aid having to travel through single counties for long periods of time and means that I will always progressing.

The next stage of planning will be to start plotting actual points on the map. I am looking to add points of interest into the ride, like visiting the final resting place of Field Marshal Earl Haig who was the first President of The Royal British Legion.

Looking at the map I can see this is going to be a ride of a lifetime!