I cycle quite a bit (500-1000km / month), but my recreational routes have all been near areas where I know I’ll have access to public toilets and clean drinking water.
I’d love to venture out onto more rural roads and areas, way outside of areas that might normally have toilet access, but that’s quite literally the only thing holding me back from doing so.
What are your strategies? Piss by the side of the road and hope nobody sees you? Squat out in a heavily forested area and risk ticks?
This is not a topic that ever gets talked about with cycle tourists, endurance riders, and other long-distance cyclists, so I’d love to know how to approach this!
Where might one find these heatmaps?
For cycling, RideWithGPS, Strava, Bikemap, and Garmin Connect have public heatmaps of popular routes. You can use them to get an idea of which roads cyclists tend to use, and I’ve been able to find some really nice trails, safe roads, and scenic routes by using heatmaps.
I will caution on the reliability of those heatmaps, though, since it may give you the impression that a route is popular, but it might actually be a very busy road with cyclists using the sidewalk. That’s not the type of route I tend to take.
Good advice, thanks. And the heatmap idea in general is pretty clever