You can of course ride an AUK DIY - EVERY WEEK from your OWN front door. No travel needed, nor accommodation. A fantastic route is guaranteed (you chose it). IF…it doesn’t meet your own high standards, you can amend it each time you ride it, until you are happy with the finished article ( by which time you’ll probably want to plot a 2nd choice or even a 300 !). Weather is also guaranteed to be of your choice (ride any day of the week). You will be that much fitter and confident when you are able to actually get to a Calendar Event
AND if you do decide to share your route once a year as a Calendar Event, then you will have very little extra work to make it happen. You can move your Start from your home to a Car Park with Toilets, and have the Arrivee in a nearby Pub, with Sandwiches laid on, paid for out of the entrance fees. You don’t NEED Controllers at the Controls, and you can even ride the Event yourself on the day, once you have handed out the Brevets, if you can find someone to attend to the Arrivee.
At the risk of segueing into a different topic. if you're doing mandatory (i.e. GPS) routes for DIY, because making an advisory route that doesn't have a massive difference between minimum rideable distance and actual, "Yes, but I want to ride on
these roads," distance is super hard [1], I presume there's a bit more work to do to turn that into a calendar event? Like, there isn't the equivalent of mandatory routing for a calendar event?
That's probably a really stupid question and I should go read a manual. But it's sunny outside and I need to take Shackleton to the farm shop for some salad.
Sam
[1] Round these parts there aren't many roads to choose from. We are hemmed in between the coast and the Cairngorms, and there are effectively 3 parallel roads for travelling North-South, one of which is the A90. All three of these roads come together in Stonehaven at the north end and Dundee at the south end (actually, the third runs out at Edzell). The A90 is a nasty dual carriageway that has multiple RTAs every month, more of them fatal than is reasonable, and I wouldn't expect or want anyone to ride on it, but it wouldn't be illegal. Heck, they run TTs out of Fordoun that go up and down the A90. Devising a route that doesn't end up slithering onto the A90 when checking minimum distance is impossible without more than the one control every 60-80km recommended.
I quite like the idea of starting a route at Fordoun village hall (car park, toilets) and sending it south to look at Pictish symbol stones and haunted castles, but that bloody dual carriageway!