First of all, a plug for the non-commercial bicycle touring magazine that I publish online. The latest edition of Bicycle Traveler is full of great cycle touring images from photographers around the world. You can download it for free at:
www.bicycletraveler.nl
The advantage of Crazyguy is that it has a singular focus on bike touring. One doesn't have to search the blogosphere to find touring journals. .. it serves a purpose and is easy to use.
Also wanted to say - kudos to Neil Gunton and his Crazy Guy on a bikewebsite!
My husband and I met a lot of long distance touring cyclists during our multi-year bike tour and the most referred to resource by far was: Crazy guy on a bike. (Andes by bike and Travelling Two were a very distant second and third.)
The reasons:
Just before they enter a new country, cyclists want to research good, traffic free routes, information on money, etc. So instead of spending hours trying to google wordpress bicycle touring blogs (very time-consuming since google ranks commercial bicycle tour companies ahead of individual cycle travellers). So instead they head to crazy guy on a bike since the site lists scores of cycling journals on almost every country in the world.
The way the journals are set up on CGOAB encourages the cyclists to write down factual information such as distance cycled per day, where they slept, etc. These are important facts if you want to know road conditions (kms cycled per day will give an indication of road conditions, hills, etc.) plus other important info. Many cycling blogs (including our own) don’t include this type of information and are just full of pretty pictures and / or short atmospheric yet uninformative articles.
The Crazy guy on a bike hosts Bill Weir’s very informative Asia journals. Bill has cycled almost everywhere in Asia and numerous cyclists were “pedalling in the footsteps of Bill”.
The majority of multi-year bike trip blogs disappear from the web a couple of years after the cyclist has finished their tour. This could be due to the site being hacked, the cyclist not wanting to pay for website hosting, the cyclist has “moved on” in his life and no longer wishes to maintain the website, etc. This is a pity since a lot of good information is being lost. Neil maintains the CGOAB site so that no cycling journals, even ones from years ago, are lost.