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Been playing with this lately, I'm very impressed!
Especially the 'suggest a ride' function on the front page. Put your home postcode in, then click 'pub/cafe ride' and it will give you loads of options to local villages and stuff, using cycle tracks you didn't know were there. And you can click the 'gravel' button to make it less roady where possible. And then export as GPX obviously. Knocks google maps into a cocked hat...
I don't work for them - just thought it was worthy of a shout out, it's a really nice thing 🙂
Yeah, I used it to plan a cycle tour from Dijon to the Med a few years ago. One thing to note is it will thing nothing of sending you on a >10km detour to avoid a few 100m's on a busy-ish road so needs some sense checking. Otherwise it's brilliant
Yep. It brilliant. The guy who made it just does it as a hobby and floats around on various forums fb groups where he will discuss his algorithms and take suggestions.
Yes - use it all the time and especially good for planning a cycle tour in unknown territory.
Can export gpx direct to garmin connect too which is great.
I've used it a fair bit, locally and when I've been away for a couple of days to find a quiet loop near where I'm staying. As above, using it for road rides can be a bit of a pain as it will divert you off down a parallel but quieter road or cycle path for a few hundred metres rather than stick on the same road, but it's pretty easy to drag your route back to the more sensible option.
it will thing nothing of sending you on a >10km detour to avoid a few 100m’s on a busy-ish road
yeah I think there's probably a balance to be found! Yesterday I was comparing it with Google maps cycle directions for a route near me. Google maps was basically 8mi, along two of the most obnoxious roads around (one of which, a raised dual carriageway, I am not sure it's legal to cycle anyway). Cycle Travel was about 12mi, almost entirely traffic free. I'd probably take the latter, although a 50% detour is pretty hefty...
Yep. It brilliant. The guy who made it just does it as a hobby and floats around on various forums fb groups where he will discuss his algorithms and take suggestions.
He's on the Cycling UK forum a fair bit. There's a very long running (like 8+ years...) thread on there all about it.
https://forum.cyclinguk.org/viewtopic.php?t=128273
It's my default route planner though not without its flaws. The major issue is that it uses OSM for routing. OSM is a WIKI which anyone can contribute to and a significant number of contributors manage to mess up the routing by doing things like sticking a stile on a road! I've just corrected some issues on Chinley Churn above Hayfield (which haven't yet replicated through to cycle.travel).
So it needs to be used with caution. For areas where cycle.travel isn't working properly I use either plotaroute (which allows manual point by point plotting where needed) or Strava using global heatmaps.
I've just clicked on the overnight stay (hotel) suggestions, and most are sensible, but one stands out - 173 miles one way, staying in a hotel near Minehead. I wonder whether the system hasn't initially picked up that 50 miles as the crow flies, across the Bristol Channel, is 173 miles on tarmac? It's also not noticed that one of my good friends lives about 5 miles from the suggested hotel so I'd be staying with him. 😀
I tend to use the map tool ( https://cycle.travel/map) for just checking distances and elevations, playing around for alternative routes.
I like the CyclOSM map symbology on Cycle Travel and usually have that as my preferred displayed map-layer.
One thing I find a bit frustrating though is off-road route options do not come up (for me anyway), such as forest roads and tracks, so out comes the (paper) OS map and searching for off-road routes the old-skool way 🙂
Has anyone tried https://gravelmap.com/ ?
Yes, loads. Mostly for french touring, although I'll usually run any cycle journey through it to see what it thinks, ie car parking to ferryport to get to start of aforesaid tour.
It does need an eye keeping on it, but it has proved very reliable over quite a few trips. Having said that, I'm still amazed when using it to navigate through a large city or urban area, its like black magic when you finally end up where you were aiming for!
Another yes - been using it trips around Ireland, Netherlands and Portugal - only issue has been in Portugal where it had me going down routes that local farmers had blocked off - otherwise been very very impressed.
Put your home postcode in, then click ‘pub/cafe ride’ and it will give you loads of options to local villages and stuff, using cycle tracks you didn’t know were there.
I did.
The site clearly has a penchant for a couple of the less desirable spots in Stirling and Clackmannanshire. I am not sure I want a route that tours the delights of Fallin, Cowie, Stenhousemuir, Tullibody and Clacks...
(5 out of 6 local routes head to there, 1 heads to the next village Callander...) 🤔
A longer route suggestion has thrown me Greenock via Paisley and Port Glasgow. 😕
Not one suggestion is to head north, into the quieter hills and smaller villages. 🤷♀️
Ha! Lovely! I do wonder where it pulls the 'cafe' data / ideas from. Most of mine have been great ideas, but if you click the 'I don't like these options' button at the bottom to generate some more, it can give you some odd ones. One of my options (to be fair I did set the distance very short to limit it) was to a Drive Thru Costa Coffee in a local retail park 😀
Yeah used it when needed an alternative route back across IOW in the spring. I think it does a good first stab. Ofcourse there will be bits where it seems over keen to avoid 100m of busy road etc but it only has so much info and 100m of one busy road might be ok but 100m of another busy road might not be.
I there was an interview with the guy on the thebikeshow podcast https://thebikeshow.net/planning-your-next-bike-adventure/