You go your way and I'll go mine

Here is the route that we will be taking going from North to South. (Click on the map for it to magnify) It is 970 miles exactly from point to point. Most people who cycle the End-to-End follow a route that travels to the west side of the Pennines skirting through Liverpool and Manchester. Our route takes us east through the Yorkshire Dales which we figured would be more appealing to our senses.

Accounts of the western routes often seem to mention unappealing industrial landscapes. The route we will be doing will be far more scenic as it avoids urbanised sections in the northwest of England. This also relies heavily on joining fast A roads, which we are eager to avoid. There is also a 100-mile corridor, which loosely follows the M62, which is just one huge urban sprawl. However, going east and keeping on the Pennines involves more natural eye candy, amazing beautiful countryside and rolling hills to feast on.

There is a slight downside of us travelling from north to south as in theory we will be cycling into the prevailing winds which originate more often than not come from a south westerly direction. This is why most people take the sensible approach and go LE-JOG rather that JOG-LE.

Dirty Barry has been plotting the route we will be taking on a site called Map my Ride. This enables us to plan our journey in detail incorporating gradient profiles, mile counts as well as a physical reference for us to absorb our progress. We can upload all of this information to our global positioning system which should keep us on track accurately with our directions... Well in theory anyway?!?

Gravy.