Sometime last fall, my friend Mark Hamilton introduced me to a site called wandrer.earth (what a cool URL!). It’s a website that overlays GPS from your rides to a maps that show which were unique and which you have done before. It gives a great visual of where you have ridden and where you have yet to explore. The site also calculates percentages for the roads within a region you have covered – starting with Earth, then by continent, country, province, region, county…

I’ve been using the site quite a bit lately to diversify my routes and venture along roads and to places I’ve never gone before. A little too often, I find myself roughing it down a loose gravel farm track on my road bike, but last week I got a new-to-me cyclocross bike that I’m looking forward to doing some more adventure-training (and cx stuff!) with. At some point this summer, I want to see how fast I can ride the Simcoe County Loop Trail. I’ve ridden several sections of it, but haven’t done the full 160km-ish loop in a single go. This year for sure!

Anyway, just a neat website I wanted to share for anyone looking for a little inspiration to see the roads near home differently since the opportunities to travel are much less. It was pretty striking to see how low the “percentage complete” for areas I ride a lot were, and realize there are tons of roads and trails I have never wandrer’d down. We are creatures of habit when we are in familiar environments, so this has been a fun way to branch out and expand my own backyard.