RiDE magazine, January 2017, Castles to see special. Pyrenees / France route

Wapping

Wapping

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This month's RiDE magazine has an imaginative enough 'Special' on rides or tours that can be made around looking at or seeing castles. Of course you don't have to go into the castles themselves but it's sometimes nice just to see them in the distance, even Welsh ones.

What is perhaps of more interest is that their route to see the castles in the Pyrenees includes not just the roads to ride east to west (or west to east) along the mountains , it also suggests how to ride from Calais to Santander or visa-versa and the time (days) it might take.

It's a question we see here quite often, which the article may well help to answer. That it also includes free GPS downloads is a bikermate bonus, too. Use and abuse it, even if you never want to see a castle as they are well dull. The magazine is a couple of quid in the shops, so it'll not break the bank.


PS The same issue will even tell you the best textile suit to buy for your jaunt. Two answers, for the price of one. What's not to like?
 
I subscribe to the magazine via the Readly app, following a suggetion made I think by Arsey. Useful enough to justify the app's charge, as it has lots of the back issues and other magazines that I sometimes dip into, too.

If the 'Special' or article is interesting enough, I'll buy the paper version as well. Cutting or tearing out the pages I want to keep, putting them in a cuttings folder. It's sometimes quicker than hunting through the electronic versions to find something maybe a year or more later. Putting the comments and heads-up on UKGSer also helps, as a search can turn them up.
 
Wapping said:
I subscribe to the magazine via the Readly app, following a suggetion made I think by Arsey. Useful enough to justify the app's charge, as it has lots of the back issues and other magazines that I sometimes dip into, too.

Hi, I just looked into Readly, I see you can use it on up to 5 devices. Does that include a mix of tablets and PC's

Ta
Click to expand...
 
Wapping said:
I subscribe to the magazine via the Readly app, following a suggetion made I think by Arsey. Useful enough to justify the app's charge, as it has lots of the back issues and other magazines that I sometimes dip into, too.
Click to expand...

Do they have porno mags on there? I'm getting fed up of hiding in the corner of the petrol station, waiting for all the customers to leave before making my move, only to find the damn thing has fallen out of my coat on the ride home.:blast:D
 
Cheers Richard, thanks for the heads up :thumb

A few of us down there in June :D

:beerjug:
 
RiDE's Simon W, who appears here from time to time, makes a good effort to help bods go touring. For years lots of quite good articles in magazines used to be completely silent on where the roads actually went, whilst the names of hotels used were often some closely guarded secret. The European centric magazines published by the Germans, like Alpentourer, never made it into such a mystery, being amongst the first to publish really quite reasonable small maps to accompany their articles and were the first to embrace the linking of paper media to web-based tools for adding GPS routes and / or more pictures and details, its capacity to store data being all but infinite.

It's easy to dismiss motorbike magazines as being nothing but advertising lead cashcows for some multi-national publishing house. Others can dismiss them as telling you nothing you could not find out for yourself, given the time and maybe sufficient inclination. But when they do make the effort to publish something interesting and helpful, it's only fair to give it a nod of appreciation.
 
Agreed, Richard !

I've used Readly for years but Ride is my favourite mag by far and I've used their routes over 1000s of miles .
Simon W seems to be a top bloke. I think he even explored a detour off the Route Napoleon that I recommended to him and has since passed it on .


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
UturnTony said:
What's not to like indeed. the Calais Santander route is interesting to me at the moment so thanks for the heads up.
Click to expand...

I've got the mag. but still to read the article. As I'm heading to Pamplona from the tunnel this summer it may give me a few ideas I haven't thought about.
We can all learn from someone who's done it before rather than constantly re-inventing the wheel ourselves!
 
Thank you for the plug, Richard!

A couple of notes for you: the daily mileages on the Santander-Santander route err on the conservative side as it keeps half an eye on pillion comfort (the Loire/Limousin tour in the same supplement is even more passenger biased, with much shorter days / more time for sightseeing stops). The Carcassonne-Calais leg uses more typical one-up length days, but real high-milers might feel even those distances are on the relaxed side. You might want to adjust the stops to suit you, rather than using the hotels recommended in the downloads/GoogleMap previews.

And on-sale dates: yes, it's nonsense to call the issue in the shops in January "the March issue". But it's nonsense that all magazines adhere to evenly. We did once, briefly, move the cover date on RiDE to being the actual month in which it was on sale: it cost us thousands of lost sales; the average consumer going into the newsagents and seeing a choice between January issue or a March issue will assume the January one is out of date, so buys the competitor's March issue. We pretty rapidly adjusted our cover dates to fall back in line with the rest of the trade.

And a quick plug of my own: if you enjoy this stuff or find it useful, do consider buying a copy. We can't keep doing it if we don't sell enough mags...
 
Simon W said:
Thank you for the plug, Richard!

A couple of notes for you: the daily mileages on the Santander-Santander route err on the conservative side as it keeps half an eye on pillion comfort (the Loire/Limousin tour in the same supplement is even more passenger biased, with much shorter days / more time for sightseeing stops). The Carcassonne-Calais leg uses more typical one-up length days, but real high-milers might feel even those distances are on the relaxed side. You might want to adjust the stops to suit you, rather than using the hotels recommended in the downloads/GoogleMap previews.

And on-sale dates: yes, it's nonsense to call the issue in the shops in January "the March issue". But it's nonsense that all magazines adhere to evenly. We did once, briefly, move the cover date on RiDE to being the actual month in which it was on sale: it cost us thousands of lost sales; the average consumer going into the newsagents and seeing a choice between January issue or a March issue will assume the January one is out of date, so buys the competitor's March issue. We pretty rapidly adjusted our cover dates to fall back in line with the rest of the trade.

And a quick plug of my own: if you enjoy this stuff or find it useful, do consider buying a copy. We can't keep doing it if we don't sell enough mags...
Click to expand...

Thanks for the clarifications Simon.
I'll make the effort to read it tonight as Carcassonne is also on my list (going to Pennautier to buy some wine) as I was there last year but without my bike.
I'm on an annual subscription so you get my money!
 
I spent mucho money buying Simon's British tours book, as in, that looks a nice place to visit let's go there. I was disappointed to see your getting bugger all royalties though.

Purely as an aside, subscribe in November, £30; subscribe in December £40. 1/3rd more come on !. Although I'm sure you'd all appreciate an extra 30% in wages though.

Because of your article I bought the arma-s suit, so thanks and keep up the good work, it is appreciated by most of us.

Next book, a European tours ??? Covering Scandinavian and round to the Baltic states lvia St Petersburg would be really helpful.
 
Tractors are go said:
so thanks and keep up the good work, it is appreciated by most of us.

Next book, a European tours ??? Covering Scandinavian and round to the Baltic states lvia St Petersburg would be really helpful.
Click to expand...

I agree so long as I go with Simon, ride bikes and write all about the experiences!
My wife is very good at writing (professional shit) so she could give me lessons before we leave!
Failing that how can I get a job with Sgt. Bilco helping newbies experience the North American continent?
Constructive offers only, please. :augie:augie
 
Khulu said:
I agree so long as I go with Simon, ride bikes and write all about the experiences!
My wife is very good at writing (professional shit) so she could give me lessons before we leave!
Failing that how can I get a job with Sgt. Bilco helping newbies experience the North American continent?
Constructive offers only, please. :augie:augie
Click to expand...

Oye, get in line :p :D
 
Nippy Normans supply Touratech, Wunderlich, Desert Fox and many other makes of accessories.
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