Hi Friends

Has anyone had any experience in using google to recommend/plot a cycling route? (is there perhaps a better option instead of google)

Are the routes generally OK, as I am looking to plan a route from NE Suffolk to SE London (about 115 miles) I would put the GPX file into my Garmin and follow it more or less directly, having no previous knowledge of the area.

I use this site. Plans using quiet roads and Sustrans. You can drag the route to route around any off road bits.
Can export file to drop into garmin.

With the release of the new garmin 1030, garmin are doing “heat map” routing, that looks interesting, but tried it on garmin conenct and it is currently a bit naf.

Would be interesting if all the data from garmin and strava could be used to recommend routes.

I used it in London recently. It loved official sustrans routes, which are often stupid and once directed me up a rarely used bridleway.

If it sends you through green bits in an urban area be suspicious.

Better to look at google maps to get a common sense human idea then combine the knowledge.

Ime nothing no is good for 100 mile routes. As the distance goes up the likelihood of it routing you into a nasty A road goes up too.

Cyclestreets is worth a look. But the above caveat still applies.

yup https://www.cyclestreets.net/ is mint, plot the route then flick to ‘quietest’ and it even picks up bridleways.
I have used google on my mobile occasionally when we’ve cut a route short and wanted to get back to the car and it picked up a muddy track and a canal, I was impressed.

Would be interesting if all the data from garmin and strava could be used to recommend routes.

The Strava heat map around here shows the busiest routes being ones that I’d not particularly choose to ride.

I tried Cycle Streets for my commute recently and it pretty much chooses the route I’ve arrived at after more than a decade of experimenting. The difference was actually a pretty clever cut through a car park and a 30 second push the wrong way down a one way street, which gets you onto a nicer parallel road.

Google recommends the route that I tried when I first rode my bike to work.

A friend and I were on a road ride on carbon Pinarellos, carbon wheels, 23 tyres and the route Google maps sent us on from Bridgnorth to Ironbridge incorporated 8 miles of mud and gravel on the bank of the river Severn.

I find it quite good ime, but I do check the route for silly excessive detours etc. It’s a good starting point for a route then edit by dragging the route.

A friend and I were on a road ride on carbon Pinarellos, carbon wheels, 23 tyres and the route Google maps sent us on from Bridgnorth to Ironbridge incorporated 8 miles of mud and gravel on the bank of the river Severn.

I think Google makes the mistake of thinking that anything called a National Cycle Network would be of a reasonable minimum standard.

I use* the http://www.cycle.travel website – really, really good. It uses pretty much the same, but inverse algorithm as google. Instead of picking the fastest route, it picks the route with the least traffic.

We used it this year on our cycle tour from Dijon to Montpellier and proved faultless.

*it does favour “off road” bridleways / un-surfaced roads so I would be cautious with some routes for my good carbon bike with 23mm tyres. However the route states how many meters of the route are unsurfaced so it is easy enough to manually reroute to avoid these bits if required.

I’ve done a few 130+ mile rides from Manchester to see family the other side of the country with the strava auto route planner. Having no idea about the roads over that way I just have to either take a punt and go for a best guess or spend ages asking friends and relatives what particular roads are like.

In all that time it’s only sent me down one road that I was cursing it for (I think it was the A57 into Lincoln) and every time I’ve tweaked the route to avoid something that looked nasty on the map I’ve regretted it, the worst of those was adding an extra 1000ft of climbing in the Peak to avoid about a mile of A road!

Oh, no hang on, there was the time it sent me down a dual carriage way full of lorries, i bailed at the first exit and just followed the compass on the garmin until I picked up the route again a few miles later. **** that for a laugh.

I used it a while ago and thought it pretty terrible.

I’ve just asked it for directions to Wimpole Hall from my home just north of Cambridge, and it sent me down the A603 🙄

Thanks for the input.

I will give it a ago and report back.

A friend and I were on a road ride on carbon Pinarellos, carbon wheels, 23 tyres and the route Google maps sent us on from Bridgnorth to Ironbridge incorporated 8 miles of mud and gravel on the bank of the river Severn.

I’ve just asked it for directions to Wimpole Hall from my home just north of Cambridge, and it sent me down the A603

The problem is, it can’t please everyone, the former sounds like a fun jaunt on a fat-bike, the latter is probably what you’d pick if commuting on a road bike.

Equally a heat-map based route for a commute through Surrey would end up going over box hill then onto Barry Knows Best.

Well well – I’ve never seen cyclestreets.net before and tried it for my route to work – it takes me over a big, uphill, busy roundabout to start my commute! I’ve been that way a few times and its horrible. Tried the Google planner and its takes me the way I go, which is a lot more pleasant (apart from the illegal section through a shopping precinct, I don’t tend to use that) … interesting.

I’ve been using komoot and find it pretty good. You can set whether you’re on a road bike or a mountain bike and it picks appropriate routes.

RideWithGps can be pretty good too, depending on the map you select (top right hand corner) it can pick different routes. On the OSM outdoors map I was able to plot some decent off road routes.

Also the satellite view on Strava is way better (more sharp) than on Google.

Per others, it fanatically tries to direct you onto anything marked as a “cycle facility”.

Bit of common sense to refine the route needed if you actually want to get from A to B in a reasonably direct route without ending up on green lanes.

When using these services I tend to use satellite view to sanitise the route. Most stuff you don’t really want to cycle shows up quite plainly.

Just looked at the strava route builder (didn’t know it already existed) it is really crap just lumping all cycling into one activity, it really needs to differentiate between road and mtb (and maybe gravel). Should also perhaps do the same for road and trail running.

I think Google makes the mistake of thinking that anything called a National Cycle Network would be of a reasonable minimum standard.

I met some Germans that were in the U.K. touring and they made the same mistake. They kept saying “but this is supposed to be a national trail” whilst stood looking at there map on a muddy overgrown bridleway.

A friend and I were on a road ride on carbon Pinarellos, carbon wheels, 23 tyres and the route Google maps sent us on from Bridgnorth to Ironbridge incorporated 8 miles of mud and gravel on the bank of the river Severn.

Yeah, I’ve had that. You really need to check the route with Streetview to see what the path or road is like.

I think Google makes the mistake of thinking that anything called a National Cycle Network would be of a reasonable minimum standard.

I met some Germans that were in the U.K. touring and they made the same mistake. They kept saying “but this is supposed to be a national trail” whilst stood looking at there map on a muddy overgrown bridleway.[/quote]

I tried following the NCN from Darlington to Aviemore. I cancelled my Sustrans membership when I got home.

I think Google makes the mistake of thinking that anything called a National Cycle Network would be of a reasonable minimum standard.

to be fair many of us have made that mistake at some time though. A good test of google’s AI is how quickly it realises its mistake

It’s useless councils rather than sustrans.

It’s useless councils rather than sustrans.

Sustrans put their branding on the route and claim it as part of their National Cycle Network so they presumably have some level of signing off or approval.

Sustrans put their branding on the route and claim it as part of their National Cycle Network so they presumably have some level of signing off or approval.

This. There are large swathes of the NCN that are completely unsuitable for families or people on road bikes. Call it something else.