Roads to Ride Map

All of the roads featured in the Roads to Ride series can now be located by map.

It’s only a map but accurately locating the position of each road and adding the URL to the piece for 40 different places has taken a lot longer than typing up 500-1000 words on a blog post. I’m not asking for a medal for the manual work… but I thought the map’s a new way to share these pieces and the links at the top of the page get widely ignored, they’re part of the furniture of the site.

With the Genting Highlands and Jebel Al Akhdar the map has a large sweep but zoom in for a map of all the famous cycling climbs and roads in Europe. Zoom more and you’ll see the pinpoints are typically located at the start point of the climb in question rather than the top of the pass. This is for practical reasons, you can easily search for the top of Mont Ventoux or the Passo Stelvio but to copy the route described in the piece the map shows where things begin.

In case you have something you’d like to map for a personal project then have a go at https://mapsengine.google.com/map/, you’ll need a Google account.

If you don’t want the map and would prefer a list of the roads, it’s still at inrng.com/roads.

2016 Tour de France: we knew this week that the 2016 Tour de France will start near Mont St Michel in Normandy. But what mountain will the Tour de France climb for the first time in 2016? They’ll be an educated guess in this weekend’s Roads to Ride piece.

26 thoughts on “Roads to Ride Map”

  1. This is great! About a week ago I was going to try and get in touch with you to suggest something like this as I am planning a France trip next year and was wondering if you had ridden anywhere around Montpellier.

  2. Just what I was thinking would be a good idea. If your geographical knowledge for these isn’t good, but you know you’re going to be at X, you can see what’s nearby.

  3. Looking at the map I wonder if there are only so few roads outside the classic European cycling countries which are worth to be ridden.
    Nothing at all in Australia, or America? Come on readers give us suggestions.

    • The U.S. and Canada are, um, fairly big places, so it’s hard to list all the climbs. For the U.S., it’s best to search by state, or by the particular mountain range. Suffice it to say that there is a lot of good climbing.

      • I am not asking for all the rides in America, but Roads to Ride is also only a selection of interesting/significant and/or famous roads in Europe.
        In Roads to Ride a larger selection of must ride places outside of Europe should be included.
        For me the European ones are old hat, I would like to read about the ones in the new world.;-)

        • It’s because the roads included are those that have a mythical status in the sport thanks to race history or some other connection, eg a training climb like Monte Serra or the Col de la Madone. Some like the Col du Lautaret are used by the Tour de France but often aren’t roads to ride, famous for the racing but not good on an ordinary day without closed roads and crowds.

          Feel free though to add links in these comments to roads that are worth riding.

        • “…a larger selection of must ride places outside of Europe should be included.”?!

          Should be?! Remind us whose blog is this exactly? If you don’t like the roads to ride features, which as I understand it are primarily based on INRNG’s own riding experiences, then start your own!

  4. Excellent, thanks for your work . Really inspirational on a Friday-morning at your desk. Same goes for all the great articles on this blog, keep it up!

  5. Just checking out the ones in my locale… You may want to move the start of the Scheldepad north a little to the bridge over the river (road N469) in Merelbeke as that’s where the group ride the piece alludes to meets.

  6. For the USA see The Complete Guide to Climbing (by bike). I know the Eastern Sierra of California well. Lots of spectacular scenery, many 5,000+ vertical gain climbs, good roads, few cars, and plenty to do for non-cyclists (as long as it’s outdoors oriented). Zero cycling history though and few services outside of the few small towns.

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