around Cambridge, UK
Cambridgeshire is very flat, so none of these rides require any superhuman ability. And most of the country roads you’ll be cycling along, are well-provisioned with pubs in case any need for refreshment should arise. Particularly good pubs for lunch are marked on the maps.
How it’s doneThe routes aren’t derived from Google Maps’ own directions-finding service; Google doesn’t let that information out, and anyway they’re targetting car-drivers, and all these rides use at least one place cars can’t go. So the routes are captured using Greg Stoll’s trick: double-click on each point on the route one by one, and for each one, right-click on “Link to this page” and choose “Copy link location&rdquo, then paste that location into a text file. You end up with a text file full of lines like this, each denoting one point on the route:
(that one’s Bridge Street crossroads). Places of Use to Bicyclists are marked with the acronym "pub":
pub http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=52.212386,0.128113&spn=0.004621,0.006758&t=k&hl=en Fort St George
Then the text file is processed by some sed magic to produce an XML
and sent to Google Maps.