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When you plot a route in a site like Bikely, Bikehike etc, does it measure the distance in a sort of "as the crow flies" type of way. The reason I ask is I lifted a route from BikeHike and followed it on Sunday. The BikeHike software listed the distance as 12 miles but I tracked myself using View Ranger on my phone and it said I did 17 miles.
So is it the case then that the mapping sites dont account for elevation gained/ lost and the GPS trackers will?
It's probably that you stopped a lot and your phone gps jumped around a bit, leading to inaccuracy. Are there any obvious spikes in the track when you look at it in viewranger? 17 miles vs 12 miles sounds much more like a big gps error than a slight accuracy difference on the website.
Try going into viewranger, going to your track, and doing 'convert to route', with a minimum distance of 30m or so. That gives a much more accurate idea of the real distance.
One last thing, which is probably not the case, but you haven't got the phone set to km have you?
Joe
Bugger. reply got lost.
5 miles in 17 is nothing to do with elevation unless riding up everest and even then...
Mapping sites using google's api don't do elevation correction but since that typically only counts for a small variation, it's not that important.
It sounds more likely that your route was planned with key points (eg junctions) and straight paths between them, hence the shortfall.
Link to your route?
Route here www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=14473
When I load it in view ranger and overlay my track from Sunday the track follows it perfectly with nowhere near enough deviation to add on an extra 5 miles
No idea - like you said there's nothing obviously wrong. Good site though - like the use of both google and OS mapping.
I Bikely'ed my ride to Chester and back on Saturday. My computer on the bike says 84 miles, Bikely said 86.4 miles. It would appear to be actual mileage travelled rather than as the crow flies. In fact, I think a roman road Hazel Grove to Chester would be a sight less than 42 miles.
Have you tried the 'convert to route' trick in viewranger yet? The deviations you get from a nokia gps are typically many tiny ones, not one big one, so it is hard to see them in viewranger. For example if you leave it on during a rest. I've had 2 miles added to a 10 mile ride once when I stopped to fix a puncture.
For what it's worth, I've used bikehike a fair bit, and the distances it gives are spot on, I've also used the viewranger record track feature, and the distances it gives are almost always an over-estimation until you convert them to routes, so it is probably that your gps distance is way out, rather than the bikehike route distance is wrong.
Joe
Cheers all.