Route planning websites

JackPozzi

I currently use bike hike to plan routes for longer rides and transfer to a garmin 800.

Would like to be able to specify the start/finish point(s) and the required number of miles and be given a few different options, just wondered if there's any site that could do something like that? I know it's possible to do something similar on the touring garmins and possibly the 1000, not sure if there are any online options that will do it yet?

Salsa

http://www.plotaroute.com/
Put in how far you want to ride and it suggests 10 rides that match.

JackPozzi

That looks almost perfect, thanks! Might be missing it but is there any way to avoid entire areas? Can see how to avoid specific roads but just tried it out and being on the outskirts of London, a lot of the suggested routes sent me into town which isn't ideal.

Diamant49

Thought this would be interesting as well, but I've tried 4 times and they all have gone generally north right through the major population centres in the area (Belfast etc) - whilst its all relatively open country to the south. If I click to avoid all the main roads to the city or surrounding towns it just finds more obscure back roads to the same places.

Its very strange!

Salsa

I'm not too sure about all the features and whether you can customize it better sorry, I just remembered bookmarking it because of that feature. If I choose a distance it seems to give me rides going in all directions. The site seems to have forums and tutorials though, maybe they will be more help than me

prhymeate

http://ridewithgps.com/ is a good one for discovering new routes I find. You can really narrow them down with the search parameters.

iron-clover

RideWithGPS all the way!
It gives you Google maps to draw on, and you have the option of toggling to only follow roads (in car mode) or also follow bridleways and bike paths in bike mode- although its a little more dodgy in that mode.

The best bit is that it automatically puts in the turn points when you turn off a road onto another which are put into the TCX file when you save it. That way you have a distance to turn marker even if the map on your unit doesn't cover it, which is brilliant for 500 use and useful for other units.

Diamant49

Salsa wrote:

I'm not too sure about all the features and whether you can customize it better sorry, I just remembered bookmarking it because of that feature. If I choose a distance it seems to give me rides going in all directions. The site seems to have forums and tutorials though, maybe they will be more help than me

Good point! Looked at the tutorial this time and realised it generates a table of about alternative 10 routes - ran a make me a route for a circular 32 miles route and it came up with several variants of routes that I regularly do at about this length. They are all a bit different to what I do, including roads I haven't used, but in quiet areas, so I will give a couple of these a go.

Have to say it looks like an ace site, so apologies for being too quick to dismiss it! :oops:

Diamant49

Sorry, have to go back to my original view - tried a route at 55 miles and no matter how many roads I click on to avoid, the 10 routes all go through the major population centres of Northern Ireland (Belfast/Lisburn/Bangor/Newtownards) - it even goes on roads I have blocked.

Will post something in the forum, as its almost a great tool, but I need to be able to indicate a general direction I want to go, or towns/cities to be avoided. Or it could include a point I want to go via (eg a round trip over Slieve Croob is exactly 55 miles, - it goes close to area, but with a bizarre loop through Lisburn!).

ugo.santalucia

Bike hike is the only one that offers an Ordnance Survey map of the local area for every UK ride... however, you can't save the ride, which makes it rather pointless... shame... :roll:

Diamant49

ugo.santalucia wrote:

Bike hike is the only one that offers an Ordnance Survey map of the local area for every UK ride... however, you can't save the ride, which makes it rather pointless... shame... :roll:

Not coming over all political or anything, but it doesn't cover NI - so technically its only covers Great Britain

I use Viewranger, but I had to buy the OS maps for Ireland (NI & Republic) - its not perfect, but for route planning OS maps are unbeatable. I can sync to routes to my phone and follow a route on that. In addition my wife can follow my progress using their "Buddy Beacon" - she never has mind you, which shows how much she cares if I fall over in the middle of nowhere.......

I would really like that make me a route feature to work better though - must try and see if it works better for Cork though, which is my christmas holiday destination (aka the in-laws :roll: ).

wotnoshoeseh

Just having a play with the plotaroute website.
I like it a lot - just trying to understand how you download the route to a Garmin with Garmin Express installed. Do I need to save it as a GPX file then upload it to the Garmin (Edge 500)?

If anyone has any advice, please let me know.

Cheers,
D

handful

I haven't used Plotaroute yet but like the look of it as well. Normally though just copy the .gpx file to the New Files folder on your Garmin and it will be there next time you go into courses. That's how it is for my 800 anyway, I think it's the same for the 500.

Normally I use Ridewithgps by the way which is top class, I just like the look of the auto route feature on Plotaroute even though it appears to have some glitches currently.

sandy.mdez13

You can try some routing planning software like Locus which provides the best routing solutions.