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Route Planning Where to go, when, what are the interesting places to see
Photo by Marc Gibaud, Clouds on Tres Cerros and Mount Fitzroy, Argentinian Patagonia

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Photo by Marc Gibaud,
Clouds on Tres Cerros and
Mount Fitzroy, Argentinian Patagonia



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  #1  
Old 11 Jun 2020
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I tend to do a heck of a lot of planning before trips, I use Garmin mapping software to plan routes, identify all the possible interesting places to see that are not too far off the logical route, allocate time to visit them, work out possible overnight stops, blah, blah.

And then when I'm on the road I change my mind and my trip ends up looking nothing like the plan.

The main thing is to spend time researching overnight stops and interesting places you could visit—there's nothing worse than finding out there was a fabulous place you could have seen which was only five minutes off your route.

Have a very, very rough idea of what your trip might look like and then only plan in detail one or two days ahead, then it can change with weather conditions, how you feel, etc. I once planned to stop in one place two nights and ended up staying for eleven. So much for my plans!
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Old 17 Jun 2020
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This is something I've always wrestled with, even after 10 years of doing big trips.

A lot are happy to just go with the flow on big trips, but if you're someone who likes to have a sense of what they're doing/going then think about fundamentals here and put in place a bit of a structure or system around that, with the caveat of not being too rigid and being willing to drop or change plans in response to circumstances. I think the trick is to have a framework around which plans can adapt and flex to circumstances, as you've suggested.

Couple of thoughts:

- Build some slack into your milage assumptions, unless it's more a liaison route where you just need to get somewhere and you're prepared to stick to it - i.e. if you think you'll be happy riding 300 miles a day, plan for 200 or 250 miles.

- Don't underestimate how roaming adds to your miles - my odometer clocked 40,000 miles for riding from London to Sydney, but whenever I've tried to replicate my route on Google Maps I struggled to break 25,000 miles.....

Hope that helps.
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  #3  
Old 3 Jul 2020
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As has been mentioned...research your trip, particularly for sites to see along the way.

I overland in a Defender 90 and I plan 250-300km a day. This allows for bad roads, site seeing, border crossing, and any surprises that may crop up.

It also allows me to be in camp by mid to late afternoon with plenty of daylight hours to setup, explore the site, relax with favourite tipple, and think about dinner. Also, for those days when I have to push it to 400-500km then Im physically able to do it. Doing long distances day after day is very much in the past for me.
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