BikeHikeUK down again.

[Mick F]

If you can live without the OS mapping Mick, GPSies is the next best thing to bikehike that I've found.

Yes, it's good, and similar to PlotaRoute. Not much to put between them perhaps. Neither is a patch on what BikeHike was like before IMO.

Goodness knows why we have to go online to create a track on a map though.

[Psamathe]

If you can live without the OS mapping Mick, GPSies is the next best thing to bikehike that I've found.

Yes, it's good, and similar to PlotaRoute. Not much to put between them perhaps. Neither is a patch on what BikeHike was like before IMO.

Goodness knows why we have to go online to create a track on a map though.

You don't. Last summer I used only my GPS all offline using maps stored on the GPS to create routes each day then ride them with turn by turn directions (i.e. sit with GPS evening before, enter departure, destination then add via points as necessary and it locally worked out a bike friendly route....).

There are also apps that can do the same on smartphones (i.e. offline) but the only one I have experience of was not great (my GPS all offline was far better).

Ian

[Mick F]

Yes, my Garmin Montana will create routes via the installed maps.
It's a bit of a faff, but it works.

I want to sit here in the comfort of my armchair with a beer and tap away at ideas for routes and rides and walks and drives.
Latest idea of mine is to follow all the Cornish railway lines past and present. It takes some planning for an efficient use of mileage and hills, same as the planning I did for all the Parish Churches in Cornwall.

[Psamathe]

Yes, my Garmin Montana will create routes via the installed maps.
It's a bit of a faff, but it works.

I want to sit here in the comfort of my armchair with a beer :D and tap away at ideas for routes and rides and walks and drives.
Latest idea of mine is to follow all the Cornish railway lines past and present. It takes some planning for an efficient use of mileage and hills, same as the planning I did for all the Parish Churches in Cornwall.

Why can't you do that online? I'd have thought you have Wi-Fi coverage round your armchair so where that maps are stored and whose processor the route creation is running on don't seem particularly crucial. It's what is on your screen that and buttons/mouse presses that is relevant not where the computation is being done.

Ian

[Sweep]

I used to use bike route toaster. Then it went pear shaped.
Then I went to bikebike. Then it went pear shaped.
Ridewithgps and strava route planning is a royal pita so can't be bothered with those.
I now favour a mix of cycle.travel and GPSies which works for me. I'll use CT to find a route from A to B and back to A. I'll use it's Google street view to check I like the route and I'll make small or big changes in it's route depending on where I do or don't want to go, save it, and then upload to GPSies, save it there and then download again from there.
Why the faffing about with GPSies? Coz downloaded GPX routes/tracks from CT cause my etrex30x to lock up!
If you can live without the OS mapping Mick, GPSies is the next best thing to bikehike that I've found.

Yes gpsies is excellent vantage (though judging from my recent post not many on here use it).
Great for fine tuning auto generated routes.
I recommend using a text editor on its output though to prune the files down to just what you need.
Then syntax checking the end result.

[Mick F]

Why can't you do that online? I'd have thought you have Wi-Fi coverage round your armchair so where that maps are stored and whose processor the route creation is running on don't seem particularly crucial. It's what is on your screen that and buttons/mouse presses that is relevant not where the computation is being done.

Of course Ian!
No issues particularly.

I have all my bike ride GPS tracks stored on my computer using Ascent. The ones before I had GPS have been re-created via online track creators like BikeHike or BikeRouteToaster etc and then uploaded into Ascent and the date/time made correct. I used to keep manual written info, and latterly a spreadsheet. These days, my Garmin is connected and the info directly inputted to Ascent and I'm a little obsessive about it all!

Ascent doesn't do route/track creation, but just records them but it's only a small step of software to do it. Ascent is obsolescent now, and Rob Bowyer the developer out in California is taking a back seat nowadays. He and I have had a few email conversations over the years and he has other irons in the fire I understand, so not developing or improving Ascent for the time being.

If you can have a program on your computer to store the GPS tracks and show a good map, why can't they allow a route creation on the self-same map? It's only software.

[Psamathe]

Why can't you do that online? I'd have thought you have Wi-Fi coverage round your armchair so where that maps are stored and whose processor the route creation is running on don't seem particularly crucial. It's what is on your screen that and buttons/mouse presses that is relevant not where the computation is being done.

Of course Ian!
No issues particularly.

I have all my bike ride GPS tracks stored on my computer using Ascent. The ones before I had GPS have been re-created via online track creators like BikeHike or BikeRouteToaster etc and then uploaded into Ascent and the date/time made correct. I used to keep manual written info, and latterly a spreadsheet. These days, my Garmin is connected and the info directly inputted to Ascent and I'm a little obsessive about it all! :oops:

Ascent doesn't do route/track creation, but just records them but it's only a small step of software to do it. Ascent is obsolescent now, and Rob Bowyer the developer out in California is taking a back seat nowadays. He and I have had a few email conversations over the years and he has other irons in the fire I understand, so not developing or improving Ascent for the time being.

If you can have a program on your computer to store the GPS tracks and show a good map, why can't they allow a route creation on the self-same map? It's only software.

Route creation and route display are very different things and require very different software.

Route creation itself is variable and means different things to different people. E.g. if you want to enter departure and destination points and have a route worked out automatically (that you can then adjust) then you ned something like the online tools discusses. If you just want to draw a line on a map e.g. with your finger then something like MapOut on an iPad (using offline pre-downloaded mapping) will do the job and save your drawn map to a .gpx file. If you want turn by turn directions then you need different tools (e.g. cycle.travel).

"It's only software" - unfortunately (for you) developing software is a non-trivial exercise; takes skill, experience and knowledge and there are plenty of employers prepared to pay for that and developing what you want will not pay for the effort required. Most people sitting at home in their armchair wont worry about whether the route is worked out on their computer or a server on the internet so there is not the commercial demand for what you want on the platform you want at a price you want, etc..

Ian

[ossie]

Not as slick and easy as BikeHike was.

Nothings perfect. I gave up on bike hike for long distance touring as the ability to plot a route on minor roads / cycle paths overrides the need to plot a route straight down the A4 between Reading and Maidenhead for example (Yes cycle travel will try everything possible to prevent you doing this).

Someone mentioned bike route toaster...great site but long gone.

I use Bikehike for walking routes more than anything nowadays or simply to determine the distance between A and B. The main map was previously google maps as we all know but that disappeared yonks ago. I presumed things were going down the pan back then.

[Mick F]

BikeHikeUK is back!

http://www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php

Still no Google maps, but I care not.

[DNC123]

Sorry, wrong thread.

[Vantage]

A couple roads and trails round here it absolutely refuses to route along. There use to be the option of changing the routing from car to bike to walking but that's gone now. No use to me anymore

[sjs]

If you can live without the OS mapping Mick, GPSies is the next best thing to bikehike that I've found.

Yes, it's good, and similar to PlotaRoute. Not much to put between them perhaps. Neither is a patch on what BikeHike was like before IMO.

Goodness knows why we have to go online to create a track on a map though.

You don't. Last summer I used only my GPS all offline using maps stored on the GPS to create routes each day then ride them with turn by turn directions (i.e. sit with GPS evening before, enter departure, destination then add via points as necessary and it locally worked out a bike friendly route....).

There are also apps that can do the same on smartphones (i.e. offline) but the only one I have experience of was not great (my GPS all offline was far better).

Ian

Locus Maps works well for me, offline on an Android device, including route creation.

[mattheus]

A couple roads and trails round here it absolutely refuses to route along. There use to be the option of changing the routing from car to bike to walking but that's gone now. No use to me anymore

I used to get round that by switching "Follow Roads" off ONLY for the problem section (IIRC the Severn Bridge was an issue). Have you tried that?

(I'm not sure that routes with LOTS of off-road are it's forté to be honest - RWGPS might be better for you ... )

[Pilot Pete]

Having used several different route creators over the years I’ve settled on ridewithgps which I find the best by a country mile. Having used the free version for a few years I decided to get a little extra functionality and pay something back to keep the site/ app going.

It took a little getting used to, but the help section talks you through just about every permutation you could think of and I can download a created route to my gps as a .TCX file which gives turn by turn directions.

The only thing I’ve found which isn’t quite right is the cue sheet - it doesn’t handle roundabout correctly, nearly always saying ‘straight on’ whether you are taking the first, second, or third exit. However, a simple edit for each roundabout sorts this.

Other than that I think it is absolutely spot on, by far the best route planner in my opinion. I can plot a 60-70 mile route in less than 10 minutes and upload it to my gps. I often spend longer thinking about it and viewing google street view at various points for clarity but the actual plotting is incredibly simple, straightforward and quick - you just click along the roads you want to follow, with an undo or two if you want to force it to follow a different road to the one it selects and just keep clicking and clicking until you reach your end point. Very simple. Oh, and in the four or five years that I’ve been using it, it has NEVER been down.

PP