EuroVelo 5

Tomorrow (today) I bicycle from Sharpsburg up to I-70.  I wish I could embed these Google maps, but alas, embedding doesn’t seem to work yet with the “bicycle” layer enabled.  Anyway, between the 27 mile, part-canal-side route (2 are before the map begins) and the 18 mile, entirely overland route, I think I’ll take the canal-side one.  At least it’ll be flat with no traffic for the first half.

If you looked at those maps, you might wonder why I picked such a strange place along I-70.  There is a truck stop there!  And I’m guessing truckers are more likely to be going long-distance and have space for my folding bike and trailer.  How did I find the truck stop?  In fact, http://www.findfuelstops.com/truck-stop-on-I-70 and http://www.findfuelstops.com/truck-stop-on-I-15 have all the truck stops I need to hitchbike from Sharpsburg (rural western Maryland) to San Diego.

But wait, is hitchhiking legal in the US?  http://digihitch.com has all the laws for various states regarding hitchhiking (e.g. http://www.digihitch.com/usa321.html which is linked from, for example, California’s info page).  Anyway, it looks like the only state I really want to avoid is Utah.  Hopefully I can catch a truck going straight from Colorado to Las Vegas.

Still looking forward to getting all this EuroVelo stuff in order, for serious.

Have been fixing bikes, seeing old friends, a wedding, a graduation, the C&O Canal historic tow-path (nice for cycling from DC inland), some caves, and meeting new friends.  My current plan:

June 7 – bike to I-70, hitchbike to Denver/Boulder, investigate

June 14 at the latest – hitchbike along I-70 and then I-15 south to San Diego perhaps via some friends in Vegas

mid-June – resume work on this website and get back in touch with people I’ve been meaning to answer and content I’ve been meaning to upload.  Also prepare for http://na.hitchgathering.org

mid-August – leave for http://na.hitchgathering.org in Denver on 20th and Boulder on the 21st

August 30 – Burning man?  Still haven’t decided.

September – Moving to Oakland for a while

Victory!

I was about to re-click on every point and intersection in RV10 (http://www.randovelo.org/fr/veitin.php) because I couldn’t find a digital file of it yet.

Then I did a google search for RV10 gpx (GPS exchange file format), and turned up Every Trail, which requires a registration in order to download files, as well as good old Fietsroute, which did the trick perfectly.

Now I am trying to shove everything on the GPS quickly and get out the door while I can still make a couple hours progress today.  If I fail, it’s not that big of a deal.  I’ll spend 15 more euros to stay here, finish up mapping the route from Lille to St. Omer, organize stuff on the website, and leave in the morning.

I have also put up my Belgium route here, such as it is, openable in Google Earth, Gaia, qlandkarte, and other mappy sort of programs: http://eurovelo5.georgejemmott.com/maps/Belgium_rev02.kml or you can copy that mess into google maps to see it.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Belgium/Cycle_Routes is useful, but incomplete.  Finish mapping RV10 for them, at least, and find a convenient way to convert from the file one can download there (,OSM? no file extension…) to other formats.  Maybe GPSBabel can do it; I haven’t tried yet.

A welcome page is brewing in my head. It reads something like…

Does EV5 exist?
No.

But the ECF site has plans and details published…
Other websites have plans and details published for the Death Star from Star Wars…

So should I try to follow EV5?
If you just like the idea of following a *signposted* international route, go with another EV route.

The biggest reason I can think of to try to follow EV5 is if you want to contribute to that project. Before contributing any more to the route they have planned, I would like some answers about *why* it goes some places rather than others… but that’s another debate.

Note that I have really enjoyed going off the sign-posted route, planning my own way. I would enjoy it even more if not held to the constraints of EV5, and if I’d finished my planning before setting out… (who knew the planning would take weeks! I guess Andrew Sykes did…)

Anyway, if you, for whatever reason, like the idea of going between London and the south of Italy (or some part in between), for your own enjoyment, I’d recommend using EV5 as an inspiration and planning your own route using resources you find here and elsewhere on the net. The planning stage can be really fun (especially if you actually finish planning before you leave… ).

If you don’t have time or don’t want to bother with that, I’ll have published a number of default routes you can follow, one way or another…

I’m really spending more time on the internet than I planned… but I’m actually making progress with the route. It’s possible I won’t make much forward progress today. Oh well!

For France part two, this map was uploaded by the same user as that posted that bikely “route” of all the water ways in Belgium. He seems to have put up a bunch for Belgium, The Netherlands, and Northern France.

http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Calais-Ardres-Watten-Canal-de-Calais-Aa

In fact his user page is *loaded* with cycle paths, many of which off of main roads and long-distance. I think he might actually be the same person who made that website, too. In any case, well done sir(s)!

http://www.bikely.com/listpaths/by/fietslogies

Interesting that he goes 2 km out of the way rather than crossing the river and using the road on the other side. I wonder why…

Under the what’s new section, it links to this project here for cycle maps in northern belgium. Gorgeous mapping overlay and extremely friendly user interface… Really nicely done!!!

http://www.fietsnet.be/routeplanner/default.aspx

Google Translate (dutch to English) makes quick work of the sidebar text, but it renders useless the otherwise helpful “remove last added path” button. Best to translate it, read it once, and then use the page in dutch.
If I don’t get around to cycling up to Gent and back down, I think this website might be the best way to plan that route. Really, just click 50 times along the rivers and download the gpx track that someone else has already made to fit the road. It couldn’t be much easier…

He also links to this GPS map source. http://www.gpstracks.nl/index.php. Again google translate dutch to english. I didn’t find anything super helpful for right now (though Roubaix to Paris might be nice ), because, even translated, their interface is really nasty to use. It assumes a knowledge of the names of places and where they are, not giving spacial context for any of the routes until you choose one by name (and in belgium, first you have to carefully mouse over to the right region… by name). Ewww….

Sorry for the disorganisation… I will clean this up, but I’m just trying to get it all down as I find it.

Links to follow up with later:

http://www.gamber.net/cyclebel/index.htm

http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Belgium-cycling-routes-by-Fietslogies-summary

For those who want to follow EV5, there might be a nicer way than I have found so far. Find it and compile it! [For example, I chose not to follow RV 35, from the Luxembourg region cycle map, up toward Huy because it looked more hilly... but the whole last part of it is along a river, which might be rather pleasant. Plot both, look at the altitude profiles and compare... ]

Even so, there might be a much nicer way to cross Belgium than EV5’s suggestions…

Also, if you’re having trouble finding info on the Escaut river/canal while searching in English, perhaps it’s because it’s called the Scheldt (Dutch: Schelde, French Escaut). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheldt

I also just learned that Brussels, the capital of Belgium, is home to so many Dutch speakers that people here say it is a bilingual city. Had no idea… Explains why the military guy asked if I spoke Dutch, when I told him my French was terrible…

PS – Indeed! The bikely map link above will show that Ronse is not on any of the water ways, and that the EV5 directions only have you stay on the River Escaut for a tiny little bit. According to this guy http://www.gamber.net/cyclebel/escaut.htm, it’s a really nice ride all the way up to Gent. It’s unclear to me which would be faster/better/nicer/easier/whatever. I’m tempted to head up to Gent and then down to Lille/Roubaix, all along river-side cycle paths… but I will remain faithful to my goal of following EV5 to the best of my ability and reporting on the status. That said, I imagine I’ll end up recommending following those river paths or others like them, especially because they seem well documented already. More later, hopefully more organized…

PPS – too much content to dig through!

http://www.beeusaert.net/website/cartes.html links to LOTS of map websites for the area. One of them is rando-velo, which I clicked on because I’ve been following “RV” routes on my paper cycle map…
http://www.randovelo.org/fr/veitin.php, which shows RV10 going directly from Namur to Brussels (and one directly from Champlon, where I am now, to Namur… it’s labeled as RV 6… I wonder if it’s the same as the RV 60 that I just got from this cycle map and put into my GPS? Upon comparison, yes, it looks exactly the same. BUT NOTE!!! This RV6 link goes all the way to Lille, bypassing Brussels. Another option to mention in the cycle-path choosing… also note that I have never seen a signpost for an RV route and I’ve been ostensibly following them for 50+ km.)
That first site also links to here: http://www.fietsroute.org/Long-Distanceroutes-LF.php which mentions LF6 going west from Brussels.
Nevermind, here is http://www.vlaanderen-vakantieland.be/nl/themas/themadetail/&ThemaID=47. google translate tells me that all the LF routes are fully signposted and that downloadable gpx files are here: http://www.routeyou.com/news/view/228/toerisme-vlaanderen-biedt-lf-routes-aan.nl
From there I find this confusing interface: http://www.routeyou.com/group/view/1508/lf-routes.nl
Which yields, in bits and pieces, after clicking around a lot, LF 6 from near Brussels to Ronse. They include information points, camping spots, elevation profiles, and all sorts of information useful to a more organized cycle-tourist
piece 1: link
piece 2: link
other pieces of LF6 don’t matter to me at the moment…
Garmin also has a cycling/hiking CD for the area for 100 euros… maybe if I lived in Belgium or Luxembourg.

Someone asked where I sleep. Last night I stayed at a camp site (with hot showers!) which, at some point, I realized was closed. The other time I stayed at a closed campsite I was well aware… but there wasn’t anything else around and I think the Swiss just assumed there wouldn’t be any tourists coming through the Alps in March. Sometimes I camp in the Forest if it starts to get dark when I am in the forest. In Basel I stayed in a hostel for two nights, using it as an unlimited internet-cafe. Two nights I have paid for camp sites, both of those primarily to do laundry. I stayed two nights with Couchsurfers in Switzerland.

Wasting daylight, but found a library with cheap internet, so here is a *fast* update.

Luxembourg was great as far as cycling paths (so many benches with trash cans nearby), but is high on my list of least favorite countries (no, I don’t actually have a list, but if I did…). After the lady hit me with her car, her first words getting out of the car were about my address and insurance company and who would pay for the scratch on her new car, rather than “is your arm ok? You know, the one I just hit with my car? How about your bike?” In fact she never asked any of those things…

Some other people were friendly, though, and I suppose most of my other bad associations were my fault (losing things, forgetting things, making mistakes, backtracking etc.) Oh well. For those and other reasons I was feeling pretty low… but all is much better now.

Belgium is hilly! I arrived with no maps at all, but decided to pick out my own route with the GPS. It turns out I selected the exact same route, with the small exception of trying out a mountain-bike shortcut in the middle, as I would have if I’d already had the bicycle map (a *really* nice map, will definitely submit a scan later) I just got at the tourist information desk here in Bastogne, some 20 km later. Go me! And go luck…

Anyhow, I’m in Bastogne, headed toward Namur. My rough schedule says I should be rolling in to Namur tonight… but it’s almost 100 km of hilly terrain away and I have about 5 hours of daylight left. Not gonna happen.

I’m off to see which of the following paths is best (some combination of most interesting scenery, camp-sites, least hilly, most direct…) and then hop back on the bike!

~George

ps – I like how in Belgium, even if you buy the cheap chocolate and beer, it’s really good.

15 to be exact. They’re here. I don’t have time to sort/edit or internet time enough to upload everything, but here is a quick best-of from the last couple days. Enjoy!