Route Making with Veloadventures

“Planning, it’s all in the details, the checking and re-checking”

What is VeloAdventures and what is it all about?

“Back in February 2017, it was a damp Tuesday evening, out on a solo ride, on my steel CX bike with the biggest tyres I could squeeze in the frame, I had the idea to set up a weekly drop-bar-bike, mini-adventure ride. I shared the idea around with a few friends, called the ride the Tuesday Traverse and two weeks later there were 3 of us...I’ve now been running that weekly ride pretty much constantly, averaging 42 weekly rides, every year since then, save for the pandemic.  VeloAdventures was born out of this, as a means of putting on longer and more adventurous rides, to serve the riding community and to do so for zero or minimal cost to those who want to come along. 

The best part of organising rides? … when you take a group of riders to a place they’ve never been, or to a place where they may never dare to venture alone, and they love it….my experience as a ride leader and bike mechanic coupled with several years working as an outdoor education instructor gives me the skills necessary to take riders into remote places and hopefully by doing so, there’s an imparting of knowledge, skills and confidence for those riders.  It is my absolute pleasure to be able to do this, to serve the cycling community.”

 I’ve been on a few of your rides and they are always really well thought out,  super challenging and always in beautiful locations. How much time and work goes into creating a route? Do you reccie the entire route or is it a series of previously ridden routes linked together or are they routes picked at random which you want to explore?

“Planning, it's all in the details, the checking and re-checking, using lots of different mapping layers, cross checking rights of way and using street level maps, to see what the entrance to a forest looks like, for example. I spend a lot of time designing and planning the event routes.  The Strade Komoot on Saturday 6th March is a good example...About 5 hours on Komoot: from the laying down of the initial route outline, to checking, tweeking and cross checking and then adding in refueling points. I rarely choose the easy lines, the route less travelled is how I like to explore and I try to create routes that emulate this attitude to exploring.  Sometimes I will go out having only seen a route on a digital screen, and just deal with whatever I find, sometimes that works well and other times it leads to a few KM’s of pushing and clambering.  I also like to go exploring with no route planned, that’s often how I find the real gems, and I’ll add those into a future ride plan.

For the events, I always pre-ride the route, sometimes as a whole, other times in sections, over a few weekends.  My Outdoor Ed and ride leader training has ingrained in me the notion of due diligence but also without pre-riding a route and capturing a few images, the advertising of the route, and advising on equipment suitability would be much more difficult, and because rider safety and enjoyment is really important to me, I want those that come to have a good idea of what to expect.”

What do you use to map the routes out?

For a long time I was sold on RWGPS (Ride with GPS) using the paid for version, as it is a very powerful planning tool.  I’ve also tried Strava’s planning tool and the OS Maps online as well, but overall I find Komoot to be the best. Of course it has its foibles, as do the other three too, but the tools, ride tyres and community input gives Komoot the detail and useability that best suits my planning needs.  I still like to get a few paper maps out and spread them across the dining room floor though, to see the big picture.

Favourite place to ride and where do you want to explore next?

“Llanwonno Forest is right up there, on a cold, crisp, clear blue, sunrise morning, early in the year, February or March, the lushness of the forest greens against the brightening blue sky...coupled with lots of gravel roads to explore and all within an hours ride of Cardiff. 

 As for where next, I want to do some 2 day rides this year, venturing further north into Mid Wales.”

Before the pandemic you were starting to host rides with FTHOI, RBW, Cardiff Cycle Workshop and I Want To Ride My Bike Cafe which was an amazing way for the local riding community to meet up and connect with each other? What are your hopeful plans post pandemic for Veloadventures?

“Once we are allowed and it’s safe, then I’m definitely back up for creating shared events.  There’s a strength and depth that comes from shared hosting and if I can facilitate rides and help generate interest and support for the local businesses that are part of the cycling community then so much the better.”

You have also started Ffordd Galed, can you tell us a bit about that?

“As you will know from having been on a few of my rides now, and as I mentioned earlier… the route less travelled, the adventure, travelling along the hard byways.  WIth this in mind I was looking for something that captured the advernterous attitude whilst expressing it in a way that reflects the location of the events... Cymru-Wales. My plan is to use this as my on-going event brand for the seriously tough rides… Y Ffordd Galed - the hard route or the hard way... both definitions are appropriate. Routes will be hard going, and will encompass the notion that the "route less travelled" is the most rewarding, whilst also presenting riders with a physical and mental challenge, a testing of the will, to press onward and possibly go beyond, that often self imposed limit.... and to hopefully to share that experience, to engage in camaraderie, and be the better for it...”

“There’s nearly always a local hidden gem to be found and those are the best”

What tips can you give people when they are looking at planning there own rides?

• Start local, from your door, not just because of the pandemic, there’s nearly always a local hidden gem to be found and those are the best, because they are readily accessible. 

• For longer day adventures, I still prefer to start from home, I’m not keen on driving to the start of a ride. On the longer rides, try to make the final 20km or so an easy roll back, especially for group rides, no one will thank you for including a killer climb at 10km to go on a 200km ride, especially if it was avoidable.

• I like to make route notes, basic ones, on waterproof paper...this really helps on the ride, knowing what's next, and useful information like “how far into the ride is the food stop?” etc.

• Try to avoid being a slave to the Garmin or Wahoo screen without any sense of what the landscape around is, this makes for a dull ride in my opinion.

• Komoot has lots of community built features, often with photographs, this can help you decide what to include on your route.

• Set manageable distances to start with and take a camera or use your phone to capture some panoramic landscape shots, this helps to make the ride more about the adventure and less about speed … enjoy the countryside, it’s not a race.

Where can people find out about you and the rides you put on?

Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Strava, Komoot and sometimes Eventbrite.  I make lots of my rides public, and I’m building a Ffordd Galed Collection on Komoot, so that anyone with access can download those and ride them.