Best route planning site ?

DeVlaeminck

Just to plan and share road rides with others - ideally so they can download them to a GPS.

I did use Strava but I don't have a subscription and wouldn't use any of the other features - anything easy to use that is free ?

Additional features are a distraction not an advantage.

ibr17xvii

Ride With GPS is the one I use apart from Strava.

Had a dabble with Komoot as well but didn't really like that.

daniel_b

Tempted to try Komoot, plenty of people seem to rave about it.

What was it that put you off @ibr17xvii?

DeVlaeminck

I tried komoot a while ago - vague memory it wasn't as simple to use as Strava.

dabber

I've started using Komoot and, so far, it seems to work very well. I plan a route on my laptop and navigate on my mobile phone. I like the voice prompts which I find useful if I'm not concentrating on the screen. It seems to reroute pretty sensibly if you go wrong. I did a mixed route of road, fireroad, singletrack, canal path and mixed off-road today and it was perfect.

Mad_Malx

Cycle.travel is by far my favourite for desk-based, and exports directly to garmin connect or gpx. I don’t think there is an app yet but web interface works on phone if you have 4g. iPhone app is imminent (if not out already). You need to select paved only, unless you like towpaths. Free with very good open source mapping, or a modest subscription to add ordnance survey and Europe mapping like ign etc.

I can’t get on with Komoot, doesn’t seem to fit my brain, and I hate its ‘social’ interface.

Defblade

Kamoot takes a bit of... ummm.. . finessing. You can pick the point you want to go to, and kamoot picks a route, which is generally there and back on the same route. As I prefer riding circles generally, I then tease the out and back routes apart with waypoints. Fiddly, but once it's done, it syncs up to my Bolt well and the rides just work fine.

ibr17xvii

daniel_b said:

Tempted to try Komoot, plenty of people seem to rave about it.

What was it that put you off @ibr17xvii?

As others have said I just didn't find it very user friendly although to be fair it was a while ago now.

Since Strava did TBT navigation & updated the route planning interface I've not needed to look at anything else.

photonic69

This is brilliant! Just found it last week. Syncs perfectly with Garmin Connect so you can create routes, sync to Garmin Connect then upload to your device. Very intuitive and you can choose Any Route or Paved Routes. Give it a go.

https://cycle.travel/

N0bodyOfTheGoat

photonic69 said:

This is brilliant! Just found it last week. Syncs perfectly with Garmin Connect so you can create routes, sync to Garmin Connect then upload to your device. Very intuitive and you can choose Any Route or Paved Routes. Give it a go.

https://cycle.travel/

Think I had that site bookmarked ages ago, but the route planner looks better now, you can simply pick a destination and circular route to be given an option within seconds! Only thing I cannot immediately see is details on the climbing and option to do proposed route in reverse.

photonic69

N0bodyOfTheGoat said:

photonic69 said:

This is brilliant! Just found it last week. Syncs perfectly with Garmin Connect so you can create routes, sync to Garmin Connect then upload to your device. Very intuitive and you can choose Any Route or Paved Routes. Give it a go.

https://cycle.travel/

Think I had that site bookmarked ages ago, but the route planner looks better now, you can simply pick a destination and circular route to be given an option within seconds! Only thing I cannot immediately see is details on the climbing and option to do proposed route in reverse.

Yes, there is a button to reverse the route and also to show the elevation. Mouse-over the elevation graph and it shows you the gradients. Cool, huh?

alwaystimetotorque

http://www.brouter.de/brouter-web/#map=5/50.990/9.860/standard

Dorset_Boy

As a club we use RidewithGPS as its free for everyone and very easy to download direct to the GPS unit.
That said I prefer Strava's route mapping.
Kamoot looked like a faff when I looked previously, but has thrown lots of freebies at the cycling journalists.

Defblade

photonic69 said:

This is brilliant! Just found it last week. Syncs perfectly with Garmin Connect so you can create routes, sync to Garmin Connect then upload to your device. Very intuitive and you can choose Any Route or Paved Routes. Give it a go.

https://cycle.travel/

I like the look of that... bookmarked. Cheers!

pblakeney

Away for the weekend and forgot my connecting cables. Looked at map, figured out best route, ride tomorrow from memory. Will report back if it fails, but otherwise, sorted.

JimD666

draft clearance

briantrumpet

pblakeney said:

Away for the weekend and forgot my connecting cables. Looked at map, figured out best route, ride tomorrow from memory. Will report back if it fails, but otherwise, sorted.

Old skool: maps and memory. I never use GPS for navigation, and if I can't memorise bits of a complicated route I do a screen grab as back-up.

I'm a RideWithGPS user if being modern, for the planning bit. I'd never go on an automated planner, as I enjoy the interaction with maps & terrain for each part of a ride.

DeVlaeminck

Yes I only ever really use GPS if I'm planning a ride with others - solo I tend to just aim for a given direction/area and I've been cycling long enough I pretty much know where I am even if I've not been on that exact stretch of tarmac.

Mad_Malx

DeVlaeminck said:

Yes I only ever really use GPS if I'm planning a ride with others - solo I tend to just aim for a given direction/area and I've been cycling long enough I pretty much know where I am even if I've not been on that exact stretch of tarmac.

But iirc you have already covered many more miles and places than most of us here, so have the benefit of the experience you’ve built up over the years. I find planning & downloading really useful if I’m exploring new areas, particularly to traverse towns as quickly as possible, or avoiding long stretches on major roads.

navrig2

I've recently started using Komoot. I started using the free version to outline plan for a long (4000km) tour in Europe and when they offered a decent discount for an annual premier version I took it.

It's not as easy as RWGPS was (from what I can remember) when using the RWGPS web site for route planning (RWGPS app would not allow route planning with the free version). The Komoot map seems to be a clunky when trying to tap a junction and inserting waypoints is a bit of a pain. The wording suggests that you set the route endpoint then insert waypoints but after each waypoint is entered it becomes the new endpoint meaning you have change the order. Not so easy with fat fingers and a 6" screen. I will try inserting the waypoints in order finishing with the endpoint the next time I need to create a route.

The good points are that it gives an indication of the road surface which for touring is of interest. It also links with my Wahoo account and the new route appears on the Wahoo companion app fairly quickly meaning it can be sent to the device quickly. It also means, if you have signal, you can route on the fly.

DeVlaeminck

Mad_Malx said:

DeVlaeminck said:

Yes I only ever really use GPS if I'm planning a ride with others - solo I tend to just aim for a given direction/area and I've been cycling long enough I pretty much know where I am even if I've not been on that exact stretch of tarmac.

But iirc you have already covered many more miles and places than most of us here, so have the benefit of the experience you’ve built up over the years. I find planning & downloading really useful if I’m exploring new areas, particularly to traverse towns as quickly as possible, or avoiding long stretches on major roads.

Yes didn't mean to imply GPS was unnecessary.

HilaryAmin

Did my first RidewithGPS last week, 80km of unfamiliar roads. It was nice and easy and the voice not quite as irritating as some satnavs. I need to get back into proper club runs after all the covid disruptions.