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Pannier website for travelling cyclists goes live

New mapping-based website for travelling cyclists aims to make it easy to find cycle-friendly accommodation

Pannier is a new mapping-based website resource for cyclists to find places to stay and rest along major routes in the UK.

Launched this week, Pannier was created by Stefan Amato, David Rushton and Nick Goodliff. The website intends to make it easy to locate cycle-friendly accommodation along the major cycling routes in and around the UK.

It aims to connect cycle-friendly accommodation connecting local and independent businesses with travelling cyclists, so you can more easily find somewhere nice to stay and eat during a cycle tour.

Born out of a frustration when finding good places to stay Stefan and two friends cycled the 1000 miles from Lands End to John O'Groats, the seed of an idea was planted: Pannier was later born after they realised there was an exciting opportunity to offer a useful service for cyclists looking for good places to stay.

Stefan Amato, co-founder of Pannier, says: "We were always frustrated with listings that weren't visually related to a route or location and there wasn't a site that made the planning of cycle travel accessible or straight-forward.

“For us, Pannier - solves both, and supports local, independent accommodations in the process."

With long-distance cycling a popular and enjoyable past time in the summer months and routes such as LEJOG continuing to be extremely popular, such a resource can only be a good thing. As someone who has done a little touring in the UK, I know it can be difficult to find overnight accommodation that will happily take in cyclists and provide safe and secure bicycle storage.

The website aims to make it easy to find cycle-friendly accomodation. It's simply a case of choosing a route (or soon an event, that's in the next phase of development) and the map will display available accommodation around your current position. Alongside the results will be displayed information on each the available accommodation with their contact details.

At the moment the list of accomodation is limited to a handful along recognised routes,  inluding Lands End to John O'Groats, but Pannier tell us that they're planning to add more routes, events and listings over the coming months until they cover the length and breadth of the UK. They also plan to add the ability to plot your own route and have listings displayed to you along that route.

It's probably easiest to take a look at the map here www.pannier.cc/Map

It's an exciting and ambitious project. We certainly can't think of any other website aiming to do anything like this. We'll leave the last word to Stefan:“We are really excited to get Pannier live for cyclists. We firmly believe that we have created a resource that will make cycle travel more accessible to cyclists of all levels, especially as we continue to grow our library of routes and events."

www.pannier.cc

David worked on the road.cc tech team from 2012-2020. Previously he was editor of Bikemagic.com and before that staff writer at RCUK. He's a seasoned cyclist of all disciplines, from road to mountain biking, touring to cyclo-cross, he only wishes he had time to ride them all. He's mildly competitive, though he'll never admit it, and is a frequent road racer but is too lazy to do really well. He currently resides in the Cotswolds, and you can now find him over on his own YouTube channel David Arthur - Just Ride Bikes

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9 comments

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phax71 | 11 years ago
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Very, very welcome.

I often take the bike away for a few days to "get away from it all" but end up basing myself somewhere and riding different routes over the course of my stay.

I much prefer point to pint cycling as having to reach a destination always helps to push you on ..

Will click though now as I can see myself making use of this if its any good.

Well done all involved.

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pward replied to phax71 | 11 years ago
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phax71 wrote:

.... point to pint cycling ....

now you're talking my kinda language.... cheers !  3

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ludders | 11 years ago
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Nice idea but the website doesn't work on an ipad so I can't use it. Hopefully an app is in the pipeline.

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issacforce | 11 years ago
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cant please all of the people all of the time eh choko. keep up the gud work stephan  3

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Gkam84 | 11 years ago
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Very nice, good idea  4

Would be nice to put in my own route. But I'm sure that'll come

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chokofingrz | 11 years ago
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Nice idea but to me it doesn't seem to offer any more than what you can already do on TripAdvisor. It does look nicer, and would probably get you sorted quicker, but I was expecting at least some crowdsourcingness whereby cyclists could rate or review the lodgings.

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JonD replied to chokofingrz | 11 years ago
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chokofingrz wrote:

Nice idea but to me it doesn't seem to offer any more than what you can already do on TripAdvisor.

Possibly the 'cycling friendly' bit ?

FWIW, in Germany there's the 'bed and bike' scheme:
http://www.bettundbike.de/
where places signed up to it have secure cycle storage and some level of workshop tools available - lob this into google translate:
http://www.bettundbike.de/was-ist-bett-bike/adfc-qualitaetskriterien-fue...

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cryocon | 11 years ago
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Perfect timing. I've just started planning a bit of a mini tour for next spring, so this may prove a very useful site. Works very well so far.

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alotronic | 11 years ago
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Super slick - looks like a great start.

A click anywhere function would be an obvious improvement for people who avoid routes like the C2C, Audaxers and so on, but being picky on a launch product. Well done them.

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