Reccy No.1

Preparations are going well, but it occured to me that I had better have a quick reccy of the route out of Vancouver.



Cycling in cities can be a bit of a pain, seeing as you have to stop every 200 ft at traffic lights, or 4 way stop junctions (which are new to me being English!) so finding the best way out of town, with as few stops as possible, is a must.

Fortunately there are lots of people that have already done this for me, so it was just a case of scouring the web to find the one that best fitted my starting point. After endless google searches with lots of variations on the term 'cycle routes from Vancouver to US' I came across one by a guy called Robert at http://www.theslowlane.com/paths/route.html. It has a full step by step guide on the route from downtown Vancouver, using bike friendly roads as much as possible.

So armed with the complete step by step guide copied to notes on my iPhone the next step would be to actually test the route out. Today being a particularly wet and windy day (why not check it out in these conditions... it's going to be wet and windy most of the way so may as well get used to it!) I set off. The idea of today was to just check the route out of town.

I have to say Roberts instructions were absolutely spot on, simple to follow and easily the best way for a cyclist to go. It may not be the best route in terms of how the crow fly's but it was made so simple by the fact that any major road crossing had a cyclist button to stop the traffic. The only thing to be slightly weary of is crossing several train tracks on Kent Ave, which as any cyclist knows can be a hairy business at speed.

I used runkeeper to track my ride again (http://runkeeper.com/user/Wezo/activity/18383473) so if anyone is doing a similar route I would highly recommend going to theslowlame website and checking out the guidence from there. My decision to turn back where I did was primarily because I had to get back to meet my gf, otherwise I would have probably gone on to Pattullo Bridge. I'll leave that for next week, and maybe slightly better weather!

 

My baby (waiting for me whilst I have a coffee in McDonalds!)