Le Tour has made the Alpe d’huez infamous but in reality it’s was one of my least favorite climbs when we visited Saint-Rémy-de-Maurienne area. Madeleine (which we named our daughter after), Aime 2000, Glandon, Col de la Croix de Fer, and even the D44B all trumped for the actual experience of the ride.
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Yep (I posted pics of both in this thread 
)
I wonder how many people have noticed the switch?
I haven’t done the Madeleine, but I did do Croix de Fer and Glandon (a nice descent into Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne for lunch in between), and I agree they are nicer roads to ride in real life. Alpe d’Huez is much busier with cars - although I did love overtaking cars on the descent. 
As it happens, my forum avatar here is a photo of me outside the café at the top of the Croix de Fer.
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Alpe d’huez descent was fun, I enjoyed it, but yes, very busy with traffic.
I much preferred Col du Galibier I did earlier the same day and Sarenne, although the descent of Sarenne had a very, very bad surface and one poor guy crashed heavily. I knew it would be bad so I took it easy.
(Canyon Ultimate CF Evo)
Madeleine I’ve done. Also ridden Col de la Loze - a very steep one above Courchevel. The climb up to Courchevel through the levels is famous. The descent is very fast too.
I had my old Giant TCR with broken handlebars courtesy of the airline. It was fixed by Mavic, and none other than Max Ruphy - what a great person he is! The TCR ran so perfectly for the rest of the week, the climb and descent of Bonnette was something very memorable.
That week I also rode a bright yellow Mavic Canyon Aeroad CF SLX on mavic carbon wheels. That was interesting to ride 52-36 and 11-28 in big mountains. that was a sweet running bike too, but the fizik saddle was nasty!
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Very nice. We intended to ride the Sarenne, but we took a wrong turn and after some debate as to whether we were on the right road we turned back. That was the day we took the balcony, and I think we were either supposed to turn off earlier or not at all. Instead we went back up Alpe d’Huez again and had a nice coffee at the top.
I haven’t done any other big climbs Alpine beyond Huez, Croix de Fer and Glandon. Hopefully I’ll get back over in the next few years and do some more, or maybe some in the Pyrenees. Peyresourde, d’Aubisque, Superbagneres, Hautacam and Tourmalet are all on my would-like-to-ride list.
This is the briefing for that big day up to Courchevel from Megeve:
I took a video of the briefing for that second day, enjoy Fergus Grant and Jean Fraçois Alcan describing the next day:
Sarenne to me was like a rough goat track, nice to tick that one off the list but I wouldn’t ride it again probably.
Aha. I’ll have to back for another look. I’ve also promised someone a better photo of the broch on the Sgurr route.
I’ve added videos of all the routes here
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Did Stage 8 today and rode the A group of the Rolling Hills route. It was very good, excellent pacing and a great course design. Lot’s of possibilities for an attack. Thanks for this great expansion (in terms of racing) the maps itself isn’t that big, but nicely designed.
I rode Glasgow again today, coming at the statue from the other side. Still only the single cone. Perhaps it’s an irregular Easter Egg.
I also got some better shots of the broch, on the North side of the Sgurr. These are now featured on the Facebook page of the Caithness Broch Centre.
@Ian_Spencer1 I think the answer to the concerns you’ve raised comes down purely to financials…which is more profitable: 1. Spending 5x as much time developing 5x as many miles of “road”, so that the minority of users who ride more than 10k at a pop can have a quality experience, or, 2. Spending 1/5 the time developing 1/5 the miles of “road”, then spending a few minutes piecing together 5x more nearly identical routes that just use varying combos of those limited miles of roads?
Judging by how many miles I see on riders’ odometers while I’m out riding the roads of Zwift, the majority of users are doing rides so short that they’re not even going to notice the lack of road miles, anyway. If the devs then spend an additional 5 min developing five new sets of purple and pink socks then they’ve probably captured another half of the Zwift population.
It’s all about maximizing subscribers and subscription revenue while minimizing investment, it’s not about providing you a quality experience. Why invest in the work to deliver a quality experience to the minority who will notice and appreciate it when you can do far less and keep the casual users’ subscription $$ coming in? While there are users who do 10+ hours per week on Zwift and who do 50-100 mi rides, they still pay the same exact subscription fees as the users who ride 10k one time a week, and who don’t care about or wouldn’t even notice an increase in unique mileage. Ya, Zwift may lose a few of the users like you along the way, but in the end the financials of limiting their investment and work hours likely way more than makes up for that.
It’s the same reason every “update” and event ends up being a mass of new bugs and why it’s obvious no effort is put into pre-release QA. Why spend the money and time when you can just keep a limited number of staff on-hand (most of who are probably still “working from home” three years after the pandemic) and keep the subscription $$ coming in. Probably half the users don’t even log on but once or twice a month, so if you can save 5x the $$ while only losing 1x the users’ subscriptions, via their dissatisfaction with the service, then you’re employing a money-making strategy that is likely to please investors. Catch yourself up in how the California Tech industry and investing works, follow the money, and you’ll probably save yourself a lot of heartache, my friend!
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i really like scotland map. the roads felt good, and i like that it was rolling like NYC. it seems like the zwift team has really figured out what makes a virtual road fun/interesting to ride on.
my only complaint is that i really think it would make more sense to attach it to watopia or makuri (or even france). that would give us more route options.
i know, i know, it’s supposed to be another “world”, but i just think it makes more sense to attach to the hubs. i’d love to do a loop around tempus that led into scotland, or a loop around yumezi that led into scotland, or a loop around RGV that detoured into scotland.
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LOL. Definitely RNG at work!
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There was one spectator who was trying to punch me as I was waiting alongside the road for some friends the other day. Seemed like he was doing Kempo or Karate or something.
But no one in a kilt trying to chop off my head with a katana.
It was probably just a Glasgow Kiss that they were attempting.
It was definitely a punch. And there are actually two of them doing the same thing. Here’s a guy in a green and yellow shirt winding up…
And here’s a guy in a polkadot shirt at the end of the punch…
Luckily he’s not that good at it, he’s so far away. In real time it’s much more obvious–guy is trying to punch people.
We are aware of a bug that results in avatars taking improper turns in events when late join is turned on. In order to ensure the best experience for those taking part in Ride Scotland events, we have adjusted the remaining events to no longer offer late join. If you have already signed up for an upcoming event, no action is required on your part.
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That’s a cute bit of whimsy. Nice work, map builders.
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didn’t someone say it has 1 cone going one way and 3 if you’re going the other ?
A cone on Wellington is an iconic Glasgow tradition !
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except they should show up on time