Simplest app for route planning

Matthewfalle

Morning all

Quick one: I need to send a route to someone who has never been to this area and was planning to just plot it out on Google maps and send that to him.

Can anyone recommend an alternative? Has to be extremely simple to set up and use, easy to send/access and supported by a telephone.

Many thanks, M.

svetty

Are they planning to follow it using a bike computer?

Matthewfalle

just a telephone - non cyclists doing a bit of gentle off roading. visiting group doing an adventure training week.

monkimark

Ride with gps has a website for planning and also has an app, although I've never used the app to follow a route as I download them to my Garmin.

Edit: just had a look at the app and I think you need the subscription to get turn directions. £3.50 for a weeks trial.

Matthewfalle

monkimark wrote:

Ride with gps has a website for planning and also has an app, although I've never used the app to follow a route as I download them to my Garmin.

Edit: just had a look at the app and I think you need the subscription to get turn directions. £3.50 for a weeks trial.

thank you - will have a squiz.

handful

RWGPS is brilliant but like others have said they charge now. Don't forget Strava, the route builder tool is pretty good. Plotaroute is good as well and free.

glyno1

handful wrote:

RWGPS is brilliant but like others have said they charge now. Don't forget Strava, the route builder tool is pretty good. Plotaroute is good as well and free.

RWGPS is excellent, I use it to plot and download routes with or without turn-by-turn directions and don't pay a subscription :?

andyh01

I use komoot all free can plan /edit new/existing routes and can then simply share, just need to be able to see gpx files again komoot and can download for offline use with turn by turn navigation.

pippi_langsamer-2

Komoot

timbo_tim

Have you tried ViewRanger? When we did a company event across South Downs, we all installed the ViewRanger app and the organisers sent the route with lots of waypoints to assist navigating off-road. (In hindsight it’s difficult to get lost there, but the tech worked).

keith57

There are many tools out there for planning and creating gpx files for use elsewhere. I’ve tried most of them. One of the best is Strava, but only if / when you switch on the ‘heatmaps’.

This cleverly shows you where everyone else has been in the past (be careful to use walking or riding appropriately in the settings at the top of the screen). The best thing is you can use the heatmap like a road or track if you like, so it will follow or route on the path your creating when you click on a new point a long way away from the last one.

An example: I used this recently to plot a walk up a mountain in Austria a friend was planning to lead a group up (paid work). She hadn’t been there before and the path on the digital map she had wasn't really routable, or really very clear which one to use. The Strava heatmap showed exactly where loads of walkers had been before, as well as less visited paths. So it was relatively easy for her to choose a likely route for her group up and down the mountain, complete with gradient chart too. As the heatmap was clickable/routable, it was literally about 4 clicks to trace the whole thing from hotel to summit then back to the hotel.

The same applies for Mountain biking and road biking, Very handy indeed when visiting new places.

Recently I’ve started collecting sets of GPX tracks in one file and then loading this anywhere I want to use it. (The free Garmin Basecamp desktop app is good at this, as a kind of library tool) So one .gpx file can be loaded onto any GPS and there are all the routes ready to use.

On any iOS device, iPhone or iPad I use a neat little app called ‘GPX Viewer’ Which can load lots of these kind of files and display them on any kind of map. along with a blue dot to show you where you are!

I’ve used this many times over last few years when doing muli-day trips, like Geneva-Nice. One file can have the whole route on it. Separate files can show one day at a time if I want to. Really handy for an overview of where you are during the day. Means I don’t bother even carrying a paper map much. Similar things can be done with most gpx / mapping apps on smartphones. Another one I sometimes use is MotionX-GPS as this can do slightly more comprehensive map caching than GPX Viewer.

Though GPX Viewer can also show the gradient profile, which I like to check from time to time when on the ride.

My new Garmin 830 hints that the route profile will be visible on the map screen when following a route, I haven’t checked this out yet ... could be really interesting?

I have followed just the profile on older units before, really good for judging the effort to reach an unfamiliar summit when abroad, but to have both together might be useful?