Has anyone discovered the course for the Country Loop lap?

General Discussion
1

The Country Loop red lap banner is just north of the western start pens. If you select the Countryside Tour or the Flatland Loop routes you will go through the red lap banner and it starts counting the Country Loop lap. But, shortly after you start the lap there is a gravel road turnoff on the right and the Country Loop lap counter stops if you continue straight on instead of taking that turn.

I thought it might be the Two Village Loop but watching the GPLama video where he did a 4 hour stream with all the badges it looks like he spawned just beyond the red banner so that provided no extra information.

So, the most I’ve worked out so far is turn right after the red banner… but then what?

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I selected the route, rode the loop and got the badge without issues yesterday. :man_shrugging:t2:

Maybe you hit a bug and got routed incorrectly.

1 Like
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OK, I’ll answer my own question here. Just to be clear I am not talking about routes and badges. I am talking about the Country Loop lap segment and the leaderboard which appears when you go through the red banner.

After a bit of Zwift stalking I figured out the following:

There are two Country Loop laps, one clockwise, one anti-clockwise. I have done the anti-clockwise one, I haven’t done the clockwise one yet but I assume it is the same course as anti-clockwise but in the opposite direction.

For anti-clockwise course select Flatland Loop as your route. You will spawn just south of the Red Banner. Ride forward a couple of hundred metres to go through the red banner then do a u-turn and ride through the red banner again to start the anti-clockwise lap. Zwift routed me on the course with no need to select any turns but if you are interested the directions are:

Turn right to go past the dragon claw to the Castle Outskirts.
Go straight to go through the sprint banner at the mountain village
Turn left to go to the fishing village
Continue straight to the Village Onsen
Continue straight to the Rice Paddies
Continue straight back to the red banner

Total lap distance is about 13km, maybe 12.9km. About 105m elevation.

This course is very similar (apart from the fact that this is the reverse direction) to the Flatland Loop but the Flatland loop goes through the marketplace street at the mountain village. The Country Loop lap goes through the sprint banner instead.

I presume that the clockwise lap is the same but in reverse. So if you want to do that lap you would select the Flatland Loop and ride straight through the red banner and continue on. When you get to the mountain village you will have manually change course to turn right to go through the sprint banner instead of continuing to the Marketplace Street.

This would explain why there are so few people on the leaderboard for this lap. If you did the Flatland Loop (which I guess most people are doing to get the badge) then you wouldn’t go through the sprint banner and thus you would go off course for the Country Loop lap.

Other points to note:

The lap timer disappears shortly after you leave the area of the red banner. Does it do that on other laps such as the Watopia Hilly lap? I can’t remember but seeing it disappear made me think I was off the course but that is not the case.

The lap timer returns about 2km from the end of the lap.

The course is completely on tarmac, no gravel shenanigans.

UPDATE: I can now confirm that the clockwise Country Loop lap is the same course as the anti-clockwise version. To ride the lap select the Flatland Loop as the route. You will spawn just south of the Red Banner. Shortly after passing through the Red Banner the lap timer will disappear off screen. Continue following the route through the Paddy Fields, Village Onsen, Fishing Village and back up to the mountain village and castle.

When you get to the mountain village go straight past the Castle Path turn-off but turn right at the Castle Outskirts road and go through the Village Sprint banner. The Flatlands Loop route takes you through the MarketPlace street but that would take you off the Country Loop lap so you need to manually turn right before the MarketPlace. The lap timer reappears when you make the right turn-off. Zwift should then route you to the finish at the Red Banner and it’s mostly downhill from the village.

3 Likes
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It is the Flat route counterclockwise

5

There are plenty of Zwift courses that the avatar ‘gets lost’ usually in the reverse direction.

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Please re-read what I have posted. I am not talking about Routes. I am talking about laps. Laps have an in game leaderboard and you get an orange jersey if you top the leaderboard. They are just like the sprint and KOM segments but they are full laps, not point to point segments. Other laps in Zwift are Watopia Hilly Route, Watopia Jungle Circuit (special jersey design), London Loop, Richmond UCI Worlds Route, Innsbruck UCI Worlds Short Lap, New York Park Perimeter Loop.

Yumezi adds two new laps. Both are called Country Loop (as shown when you pass through the banner/arch) but one is clockwise, the other is anti-clockwise. It’s all described in my earlier post.

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The route is the lap. Try it.
I have done the nine orange jersey laps all in a row.
I rode it both ways and yes the clockwise direction is broken.
(This was still true after the 5/26/21 update/fix.)

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I took the Countrside Tour route but then manually kept going straight to avoid the dirt road that climbs to the tree, this kept me on pavement and took me to the castle and through the sprint in the castle, and then back to the starting point. To my surprise the Country Loop lap stayed active the whole time and I took the jersey, not because I was fast but because there were only three other people who on the leader board. Probably people like me trying to avoid that gravel climb.

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Wait. So to compete for the Flatland Loop orange jersey, you have to do something different on course than just select the Flatland Loop to ride??? If I read your Update correctly, you have to turn right and go through the Village Sprint (the auto-turn would take you straight). That explains why the counter disappears, I don’t get a time, but do get credit for the route.

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There isn’t.a Flatland Loop jersey. There’s a Country Loop jersey.

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Yep going clockwise hasn’t worked on the Flatland Loop.(even after the updates)
Going counter clockwise works fine and you’ll get the jersey if your fast.
(but cross the start/finish line before making a u-turn to go ccw)

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Looks like Flatland Loop jersey to me. Maybe two different ones?

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I stand corrected!

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Looks like they’ve changed the name in an update. It was Country Loop before but then the elevation and distance was also zero at the time as it was for all the other segments. It was Country Loop on both the clockwise and counterclockwise versions so I wonder if they’ve changed both names to the Flatland Loop or if one is Flatland and the other is Country now.

Here’s a screenshot I took before the update:

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Now there are no leaderboards at all. June 15 update messed it all up.

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Have they stuffed up the leaderboards? The last ride I did was on 15 June Australian time so it was most likely before the update.

I can confirm that at that time the clockwise and counterclockwise loops had both changed names to Flatland Loop (why Zwift? why?). They also added the slope and distance to the leaderboard (funny how they have a slope for a loop but I assume it’s just vertical elevation divided by distance) and the timing counter would now stay active throughout the whole loop (finally, something right).

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