Round trip generator for road bikes

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OneArmedBandit

Active Member
Hi,

Did search but couldn't find an answer.

There is a really good site - cycle.travel - for planning round routes. Basically, put in where you are and you can use a slider to choose how many miles you want to travel, whilst it shows you three different loops on the map.

The routes, intentionally or not, tend to be very scenic. However, they are only really suitable for mountain bikes.

Is there any equivalent where you can specify only paved routes, but still get cycle tracks included? I know you can build your own with RidewithGPS but I would love an impulsive "I want to go on a 100km ride" and five minutes later it's on the Garmin and I'm on the road.

Thanks!
 
OP
OP
OneArmedBandit

OneArmedBandit

Active Member
It's worth a try.

http://cycle.travel/

It is curiously quiet on how it chooses routes, but it has picked some very pleasant routes for me. I think because it doesn't match your request exactly - often the routes are 5+/- your request.

It appears to use OSM mapping and avoids any busy roads, for any distance, like the plague which can be nice. Often it ends up on routes where, by a combination of off road tracks and country lanes I don't see a car for many miles. But because of that it does take about 50% longer to cover the distance than it would if I stuck to a normal route.
 

DaveReading

Don't suffer fools gladly (must try harder!)
Location
Reading, obvs
The routes, intentionally or not, tend to be very scenic. However, they are only really suitable for mountain bikes.

That's not my experience (though, to be fair, there aren't many mountains round here :rolleyes:).

Cycle.travel does at least highlight any unsurfaced segments of a route that it has planned, and you can easily tweak a suggested route using the map to stay on paved roads.
 
How what?
How...
to remove any non tarmac tracks / paths from the osm data in its database.

---
Komoot does this too,and you can program it for road bikes.
Hadn't actually used it for this. I don't think it does have this functionality after all.
 

Tim Hall

Guest
Location
Crawley
The person behind cycle.travel posts on here from time to time I think. He certainly posts on YACF. Hang on, I'll try and summon him.

<fx>frantic tapping on keyboard</fx>
@Richard Fairhurst are you there ? Can cycle.travel be tweaked to prefer one road type over another?
 

NorthernDave

Never used Über Member
I've struggled to find one that keeps to paved roads suitable for a road bike.

There is a green lane near here that they all seem determined to route you down but part of it is a rough rocky ridged surface, which then gives way to packed earth which is impassable in anything other than a tractor from the first decent rains of October through to well into spring.
 
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