Can’t seem to find the cause of a really annoying glitch in manually planning routes on Strava.

For some reason when creating a new route using the Strava web app, the manual waypoints I place on the route start refusing to obey my placement.

So can plan the first few km’s no problem. Then, without warning, as I place the next new waypoint it jumps from where I place it to an adjacent road / path. I undo and place again, but the waypoint just refuses to stay where I put it and winds up on a road / trail nearby, just not the one I want!

If I carry on it gets more and more removed from the route I want to plan to the point of going in an opposite direction.

Happens in both on and off road route planning.

These are not private or un-mapped trails / roads and my heatmap shows they have been tracked many times before, so why won’t Strava let me place the pin where I want?

Have asked for Strava help, but all I get is ‘help’ articles which don’t cover the problem.

Any ideas from the STW hivemind to help me keep my sanity?

only thing I can think of is to make sure you’ve set any surface and any elevation on the left?

Thanks – Elevation set to ‘Any’ as is Surface type.

The ‘Follow Most Popular’ might be something to do with it, but as I’m manually creating the route, I wouldn’t have expected this to make a difference.

Will try with it on and off.

I sometimes get that when it doesn’t think there is a byway/road there. There is a spot I ride regularly where it thinks you can’t exit the bridleway onto the road so the route planner gets to the end and tries to find an alternative route which is back the way came and along the road.

I normally switch to manual mode to get past that bit before switching back and carrying on.

Not entirely sure but I got the impression that it doesn’t actually route using the heatmap so the track has to exist on whatever underlying map it is using (OSM?). I’ve certainly had the situation where it refuses to plot a route along a section even though the heatmap shows that others have ridden it.

Thanks all.

Manual mode has just allowed me to do the route I wanted. Didn’t realise that you could toggle on and off mid planning!

@hooli I think you have it – whilst the map may display a road / trail, if there is no underlying data for it, then it won’t allow auto mode to join the dots between the waypoints.

Utterly frustrating as there are roads that exist, exist on the Strava map display, but obviously not in the road data that it is using in auto mode, so it won’t let you follow them. Manual allows you to finesse your way around the gaps.

Think some of these waypoints are in the middle of Strava Segments too!

Thanks all.

I had the same problem. New cycle bridge over the A14. Lots of heat map traces, but wouldn’t let me enter a route over it, kept putting me on the nearby roads.
I’ll try manual mode, so thanks for the info.

yeah its well annoying. i find it will often crash using manual mode after you’ve already plotted most of the ride!! also, when you try and crib someone else ride who has ridden off piste – the points on your new route jump about to recognised paths leaving it nothing like the one you want!

my top tip. change the activity type from cycling to jogging when plotting. this way it picks up many more footpaths and heatlines.

I use http://www.bikehike.co.uk

None of the online tools seem 100% brilliant. I’m not keen on Strava or Komoot. Bikehike is good (especially as you can choose foot or bike and mix them in a route, useful for incorrect routing from OSM). My go to is cycle.travel which although not perfect is pretty good and free.

Regarding OSM routing. This is one of the major issues with route planning software using OSM. Anyone can sign up to OSM and add their own modifications. It seems to me some contributors don’t understand the fundamentals of digital mapping and especially routing (a stile in the middle of a road was a good one).

Correction to the above. When I said you can swap from foot to bike in Bikehike I was talking rubbish – it’s Plotaroute, which is fairly decent.