cycle.travel is the best I’ve found. Is there anything else better out there for planning long distance cross UK routes?

I just use OS maps

OS has it’s place. But I find the on-line planners much quicker, at least in the initial stages. The problem I have most is not being able to stick to NCN, or to specify traffic free routes.

As I say cycle.travel is good, but struggles over longer distances, ie > 200miles, and the on-screen background map data is vague.

google maps route planner set to cycle, export route to gpx, tweek on OS map.

I used MapMyRide to plan a multi-day road ride – I don’t think it’s much good for off-road, though.

I’d probably use Garmin to plan a similar trip now, just because it’s easier to upload to the Garmin unit…

Not a problem if you use OS maps. If I’m planning a route I prefer to do it “from the ground up” so I understand all the decision points and can alter them according to what I see on the map.

BIKEHIKE.

In the past I’ve used a mixture of Google Maps with the cycling overlay combined with Open Streetmap and liberal doses of google streetview to check the path I’ve been directed down isn’t a tractor track across a field or a trunk road.

Google on it’s own is a bit crap though. It tends to overly favour paths that aren’t suitable on a road bike and also go the long way round to avoid a short section of unsuitable road where you could just bear it or walk the pavement. (I assume this is becuase it is meant for short cycle comuting in citys with cycle infastructure rather than long distance road bike tours)

Now though the Strava route planner is excelent and my first point of call.

It uses route popularity data so takes you where people like to cycle. Used it to get from South Bucks to Richmond, Surrey the other day to retrive a car after a night out. Google wanted me to go a lot of the way on towpaths which isn’t really feasible for a 50km+ ride in 2 hours. Strava picked a perfect route which I’d never have seen on the map but was as quiet as is possible when cycling towards a major city.

Bikeroutetoaster used to be good. Not as easy to use now I don’t think after its redesign (I don’t think my laptop screen is big enough) it the routes it picks are good and you can manually plot if you get sections where it won’t ‘connect’ your route from a road to a path or some such. That’s one of the main issues with online planners, their base data may not be complete, I know I’ve had to use google map maker to tweak maps where paths and cycle path havnt been correctly joined to roads, so it can’t plot a route through them.