Saturday 5 April 2008

Cycle routes

I noticed that a national cycle route passes right through our village. It is marked by a blue sign with a cycle on it and a white number in a red box. The sign is for route 65. I went onto the Sustrans website to check it out. The maps they provide are pants. They are deadly slow to respond, they are not slippy maps (you have to keep clicking a scroll button and the whole page refreshes) and they are out of date. They also give no written detail, so it took me a while to realise that there are alternative routes. Route 65 is from Hull to Middlesborough. Nearby there is also route 1 and route 66.

I guess they don't tell you too much on the web site because they want you to buy the route guide - this seems to a common ploy, especially with charities and maybe that's fair enough.

After a bit of poking around I worked out that one option of route 65 takes a path along the Humber bank from the Humber Bridge to North Ferriby. It then appears to go up Swanland Hill to Swanland, West Ella, KirkElla, Anlaby, Hessle and into Hull, which is perverse. But I got it wrong this is two alternative routes that meet at the crossroads in Ferriby by Medici's restaurant and then head west to Melton and beyond.

I followed the route from Hessle to Hull which it shares with route 1. Route 1 runs from Dover to Shetland up the east side of the country. It crosses the Humber Bridge which is why it appears in Hessle. I traced the routes into Hull as far as Ann Street where I lost them, so I'll try that again another day.

Now I just have to figure out how to add them to the map.

1 comment:

Shaun McDonald said...

ncn_ref=1 for ncn route 1.
http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/osm/ is where they will show up sometime after the thurday. when the map is updated.