Visit Natural North Florida Bicycle Club
Introduction
Welcome to the Visit Natural North Florida Bicycle Club! Bicycling has long been popular in Natural North Florida. The climate allows for year-round bicycling and flat topography makes for easy riding and fast times. The popularity of bicycling in the area is evidenced by the existence of four bicycle clubs, the Gainesville Cycling Club, the Suwannee Bicycle Association, the Capital City Cyclists and the Tallahassee Mountain Bike Association. Also based in Gainesville is the Florida Bicycle Association which organizes rides throughout the state. Gainesville regularly appears in lists of the top bicycle-friendly cities in the nation. Additionally, the region has several grade-separated bicycle trails.
Visit Natural North Florida has developed this series of bicycle routes to acquaint visitors with bicycling opportunities within the region. In developing the routes, Visit Natural North Florida consulted with local bicycle riders, Bike Florida, local bicycle clubs and local governments.
Integration with Ride wth GPS Cell Phone App
Digital versions of the maps, route descriptions, and cue sheets can be downloaded to a cell phone using the Ride With GPS cell phone app. The app is free of charge. However, to download the routes to your cell phone, we recommend joining the Visit Natural North Florida Bicycle Club. Joining the club is free of charge, although you may receive email correspondence from Visit Natural North Florida from time to time as a club member. An opt-out option is available after receipt of your first Visit Natural North Florida quarterly enewsletter.
In order to join the club and download club routes to the cell phone the app, it is necessary to become a member of www.RideWithGPS.com. The organization has a free membership category which allows you to join the club, download the cell phone app, and download club routes to the cell phone app or to a GPS device.
It may be possible to view the routes on the cell phone app without joining Ride With GPS. However, we recommend joining the club so you can download maps to your cell phone and/or bicycle GPS device. Otherwise, should cell phone coverage be lost while riding, the route map appearing on your screen may be lost as well!
Where is Natural North Florida?
Natural North Florida is the northern part of the state between Tallahassee and Jacksonville, but includes neither. Rather, it is the area in-between. The region encompasses approximately 9,000 square miles/23,300 square kilometers.
The Routes
The club currently has 30 routes, 26 of which are designed to be completed in a single day. However, many of the single-day routes can be divided into two-day trips with overnight camping/lodging options available. In addition to the single-day routes, the guide contains two multi-day routes: Florida’s Big Bend Coastal Route and the Grand North Florida Tour. These two routes are generally comprised from the single-day routes which have been stitched together to form a single, continuous multi-day route. The two multi-day routes are not segmented by day. Rather, given significant differences in the abilities of riders, it is left up to them to determine how many miles can be ridden in a day and to plan overnight stays accordingly.
The routes are available through the Visit Natural North Florida website at www.vnnf.org/bikeguide. The website provides maps, elevations, cue sheets and descriptions. It also provides an opportunity to download a pdf copy of this guide, to leave comments, and to rate the routes.
These routes represent the region’s most interesting attractions and the best available routes to reach them. The featured attractions are the best of what Visit Natural North Florida has to o¬ffer. They feature interesting scenery, springs and rivers, state parks, state forests, national wildlife refuges, small towns as well as lodging/camping opportunities. Some of the routes are grade-separated trails. However, most are rideable road shoulders on paved roadways where riders should expect automobiles and truck traffic. They avoid the busiest roads and minimize the use of limerock/dirt roads, but a few sections busy roads and limerock/dirt roads are used as they represent the best, or sometimes only, route available. Generally, the route descriptions note the presence of unpaved roads and recommend work-arounds or alternative routes for those who wish to avoid them. For families with children, it is best to stick with the grade-separated trails featured in this guide.
Most of the routes average between 50 to 60 miles in length. Users can start at different points than those suggested, or only ride that portion of a route as desired. Some of the routes provide suggested side trips. Such side trips can always be ignored to compensate for time and distance limitations.
Cell phone coverage can be spotty to non-existent in rural areas, particularly along the coast when away from U.S. Highway 98. We suggest printing the maps, cue sheets and route descriptions and taking them with on your ride. If relying on GPS devices or cell phones, battery charging devices are recommended to keep such devices from running out of battery before running out of route!
The route segments are classified as to whether they are a grade-separated multi-use path (in blue), a paved road (red), or a limerock/dirt road (light green). Curiously, the different route segment colors do not appear on maps viewed on the cell phone app (only red is visible). This important piece of information is another good reason for printing route maps from either the Visit Natural North Florida website or from the Visit Natural North Florida Bicycle Club on Ride With GPS.
Printing Routes
RidewithGPS allows users to print route maps, elevation profiles, cue sheets, points of interest, and route descriptions. Various printing options are available in the bottom right-hand corner when viewing a RidewithGPS map page. We recommend selecting the “PRINT MAP AND CUE PDF” option as it will allow you to print all of these features as a pdf file which RidewithGPS will email to you.
The RidewithGPS “Print map and Cue PDF” function has a few quirks. Please be aware that if opting to print the route description, RidewithGPS will only print that portion of the description which fits the first page (it will not allow you to print the route description separately). Depending on the options selected, you may lose some of the description. All route descriptions end with a disclaimer statement. If you do not see the disclaimer statement, you have not printed the entire route description!
We recommend printing the route description separately from the map, cue sheets, and elevation profile. This can be a tricky. To print the description the Print Map option must be set to Yes and the Print Description box must be activated. Additionally, the Print Elevation Profile and the Print POI options must be set to No or otherwise turned off. For the one-day routes, the paper size should be set to A4. For the Big Bend Coastal Tour and the Grand North Florida Tour, the A2 paper size must be used. Although these are large sizes, pdf files can always be printed on letter-sized paper using Adobe Acrobat’s Shrink-to-Fit function. For printing the maps, cue sheets, elevation profiles and Points of Interest, uncheck the Print Description option and change the paper size to US Letter. Experimentation may be necessary to obtain the desired print results.
About Visit Natural North Florida
Visit Natural North Florida is a multi-county destination marketing organization which promotes nature-based tourism in north central Florida. Membership in the club is open to all and free of charge, although you may receive a Visit Natural North Florida enewsletter from time to time as a club member. An opt-out option is available after receipt of your first enewsletter. For more information about Natural North Florida, visit our website at www.vnnf.org and our Facebook page.
Disclaimer
The Original Florida Tourism Task Force (dba Visit Natural North Florida) and the North Central Florida Regional Planning Council do not warrant the safety of the routes on this map for use by bicyclists. Bicyclists should use these routes only if they have the adequate skill level as bicyclists, and bicyclists must make that determination. All the roads shown are used by automobiles and trucks, and bicyclists assume the risks for their own safety when using the roads and/or routes indicated on this map. The Original Florida Tourism Task Force, the local governments in which these bicycle routes are located and the North Central Florida Regional Planning Council are not responsible for any damages whatsoever from its use.
Get Inspired, Not Lost. © 2025 Ride with GPS.
Servicevoorwaarden
Privacybeleid
