Those who have lots of routes – how do you organise them?

I’ve tended to organise by road or off road folders then by County but it’s all becoming terribly cluttered. One possibility is breaking down each County into north, east, south or west.

Help!

Edit: am using Tracklogs software.

It’s all in my head. Then refresh myself by looking at maps online before going somewhere I haven’t been for a while.

This is a Route Management problem! Lucky you with a good memory. 🙂

Not sure this helps your problem but here goes…

I use Basecamp

If I do a ride on a bit of track I’ve not used before, I upload the track into a folder called History/Rides (yes, there’s a History/Walks and a History/Paddles). I use a colour coding to differentiate Road and MTB rides.

Routes I’ve been sent or am planning myself go into Road Rides or MTB Rides.
These are just called meaningful names like “100km loop”, “Home to Dalwhinnie”, “Torridon Lollipop” or similar.

I can see them all at a glance in the Basecamp Explorer/File Manager view or all on a map.

Ah, that’s Garmin and will take a closer look at that. So you don’t split further your mtb/walk/road routes?

I think that perhaps my route names could be edited to make it easier but there’s just so many of them!

Nope. Recorded Tracks are named by a date/timestamp and there are loads of them.

I guess I just don’t have that many routes that I need to have pre-set. Most of my local riding I just had out into the hills and make it up as I go along. If I’m going somewhere new I’ll just create the route as and when I need it. I only have a few that I’ve downloaded from elsewhere or have created well in advance for planned adventures.

Being able to view them all on a map means those I have are easy to select so the naming convention is almost irrelevant.

Is there some particular reason you need to have so many Routes?

Edit: Just checked. I currently have about two dozen Routes in Basecamp, split between walk, road, MTB

Interesting scotroutes, thanks. As regards being able to view the routes on a map, well that must save time and sounds a very useful feature.

I guess I’m keeping all these routes for sentimental reasons, a reminder of all the wonderful/not so wonderful places where I’ve been priveleged to ride.

Actually it’s just another reminder of my failure to keep a journal/blog. 😳

recorded tracks get drag+dropped from the garmin to a folder called GPX_Files.
planned routes get put in a folder entitled by the approximate location.

Endomondo (currently) gives me a way of finding ridden/skied/hiked routes that may be of interest, and from that, I can find the GPX file.

Only issue is…
Garmin have an arbitrary limit of 1000 files on the SD card, so I have to remember to file+purge. Must check that tonight actually.

Do like the idea of seeing them all on a map though, and not just via a calendar view.

Thanks andy and interested to hear that you file by approximate location, presumably that’s your start and finish point?

Am still pondering simply renaming each route to include village/wood/hill/cafe although will be limited by number of characters.

The map view looks something like this (when zoomed out)
[url=https://flic.kr/p/hxE37m]BC-2013-11[/url] by ScotRoutes, on Flickr

and like this when zoomed in a bit

[url=https://flic.kr/p/rPgnXg]BC_Mid[/url] by ScotRoutes, on Flickr

It goes right down to OS 1:50K level as I have that mapping on my Garmin

That’s a lot of Scotland you’ve ridden there 🙂

My focus is always on the bits I’ve missed 😆

I’ve done more since that image was created and there are bits I rode (and lots of bits I’ve walked) before recording it.

Check that out, well of course you’ve done the Munroes haven’t you. 😀 That looks seriously impressive scotroutes!

I have Memory Map and I upload my routes onto that so I have a map with all the decent stuff marked. It’s good for looking at, for plotting new routes, but a bit cumbersome. Basecamp looks great though, I’m downloading it now….

love that. Are you based in Edimburgh by any chance…

Now can you just show the routes without the map, and see if we can recognise the country.

Scotroutes/Colin – is there a way of keeping the OS mapping as default in Basecamp? Right now mine has to load every time I plug the Edge back in, taking ages to do so, would be better if it there all the time!

I have basecamp but didn’t find it very user friendly. Maybe I’ll have another go as previously I was using it to plan rides.

For the moment I have vague memories of routes and then have the gpx files on my computer. Filed under walk, road, mtb, cx and to do. I try and make the file names sensible so I remember them.

Would be nice to have a simple management system. I don’t want a lot of features just the ability to get an overview of the route when I click on it.

You need to have a copy on your computer. I don’t think you can copy off the Sd card. I got fed up so mine has OSM maps on there because waiting for it to get the data of the SD card in the garmin was sloooow

(a) when I plug in my Oregon it’s only a few seconds until I can select the OS mapping.

(b) I copied the OS mapping to another SD card which is now permanently plugged into my PC. Basecamp sees this and just uses that (sticking it on a HDD didn’t work)

(c) I’ve also installed OSM mapping (Talkytoaster) on the PC HDD and can select that in Basecamp should I wish to do so.

Sort of like this?

[url=https://flic.kr/p/rwRYG7]BC_Lo[/url] by ScotRoutes, on Flickr

excellent!