Transcontinental Race (London - Istanbul) - #TCRNo4

Until one of those pesky hills comes along.

Scratch that, @hippy is a former hill climb winner.

He won on a 2 minute hill, not Mont Ventoux.

I'd pay good money to watch @hippy try and hold @skinny 's wheel on a proper col.

How much good money?

A million Aussie dollars. Or £10 in real money.

Anyone want to create a route for me? I pay top dorra...

Just do a search in RidewithGPS and you'll get a few versions! May not be final drafts though.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/may/15/juliana-buhring-how-cycling-round-the-world-saved-me

Distance and ascent?
Penalty rates: -£20 for every non-road and -£50 for every detour because no bikes allowed.

£10 almost buys a pint in Australia. You sure you wanna go that big?

I just need to find a route with loads of 2min climbs and no long ones... I'm sure that'll be easy.

Easier than losing 25kg anyway.

Talk about TCR at Spin this weekend https://twitter.com/saddleblaze/status/733707952939487232

Well, there's 100k out of 4000k I don't have to worry about mapping...

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=19cCxWLbuyzbNGX4rgZJPfxMDn0M

Only problem is the first section out of Claremont goes in the wrong direction!

Pretty sure the Grimsel had the most nice windscreen stickers when I was kid.

Claremont

I have no idea where you're talking about but I'll look at it at some point.

Stop Pres!!! I did some mapping!!!! I now have a base route and I then removed a couple of banned tunnels it'd routed through. There seems to be lots of other tunnel sections on the same road(s) though - how do I know these aren't banned as well? I googled one of them and found no information about legality of cycling - just who built it.

Ah, Clermont-Ferrand the town near the Puy de Dome.

What do you mean wrong direction? Which way is it supposed to go? Doesn't it go from town out to the PdD?

Idomeni Border Camp "We are monitoring this potentially problematic border crossing"

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/24/idomeni-greek-riot-police-move-in-before-dawn-to-clear-out-refugee-camp

Is ausance on the route? My in-laws live near Clement and puy de dome...

It's DIY routing so.. it could be. Link to it?

What do you mean wrong direction? Which way is it supposed to go? Doesn't it go from town out to the PdD?

Yes, but that bit is taking us West when we want to go East so, as 'help' goes, it's not the most useful as we'll have to re-navigate a bit extra to get back East again

Overall, it sounds like you're making great progress with this!

. Idomeni Border Camp "We are monitoring this potentially problematic border crossing"

I saw that - Mike obviously put in a call to Tsipras to stop messing about with the bailout negotiations and sort it out

East, we're going east?! Oh no!

:)

I have two routes - one through Greece at that dodgy border or one that heads north avoiding Kosovo and runs through Bulgaria before dropping south. Any idea which one is going to be better?

Bulgaria was good, effectively one road through the middle of it, pretty flat and 24 hour petrol stations every 20km or so.

Sounds idyllic.