Cycle Travel Question

[mjr]

Brilliant. 3 columns but big type so it can be shrunk a bit to fit the pocket, or taped together to make a pull-out roll

[JakobW]

Those look fantastic - just the kind of thing I was thinking of! Thanks again.

[Tinnishill]

Impressed

[MrsHJ]

Hi guys, totally dozy here. I've done this before but now, two days before I go on tour my Garmin doesn't seem to be seeing the cycle.travel files I'm dropping onto it. My software is up to date, my maps are up to date with a brand new micro sd card purchased urgently the other day when garmin connect had a hissy fit.

So I have the following questions:
1. What format are people generally downloading from cycle.travel to use on a garmin edge touring.
2. What method are people using. I've downloaded the files as tcx and gcx onto my laptop and then dropped straight onto my USB connected device.
3. Where are people putting their routes. I've tried downloading onto my E drive which seems to be the main garmin device and onto garmin/course. Then I tried onto my F drive which seems to be my new SD micro card in the same place.

None of these options has lead to my garmin being able to see the courses. I've just deleted my old courses from my previous tour and they had all downloaded fine. I've also tried dropping the files onto garmin connect but I don't think I can see a way to then export them to my device.

My old course files were tcx I note. I've now tried dropping them onto new files on both the E and the F drives using tcx, still no luck.

I realise I'm asking what is probably an obvious question but I'd really appreciate someone pointing me as to be best files to use, best location to put them onto and how to get everything talking to each other. Cheers.

OK, I'VE GOT IT. NOW ON GARMIN CONNECT, most internet stuff still directing to old method. PHEW.

[SA_SA_SA]

The new route sheets look very neat:

I notice you have abandoned OSMs exit counts presumably due to OSM inaccuracy and replaced it with the name/Number of the exit road. I wonder if the relative turn direction of the exit road could be accurately extracted: i.e. it would be useful to know whether one was to go round roundabout and exit in a'straight-ahead-ish' or left-ish or right-ish direction etc?

[Richard Fairhurst]

That's an interesting idea - I'll give it some thought (maybe the traditional "2 o'clock"-style directions?). The exit counts are really problematic because generally people just use them to refer to the number of roads, which is fine until there are cycleways/paths leading off a roundabout...

On another note:

I've just added tooltips to the 2D elevation display showing the height and gradient. So you can mouse-over the relevant bit of a climb and it'll say "124m · 5.4%" or similar. Obviously subject to the accuracy issues as currently being explored over in another thread, but I've been enjoying recreating the Vuelta climbs with it...

[Richard Fairhurst]

And by popular demand...

I'm really pleased to say that the much-requested feature to go direct between two via points is now live.

So if there's a path missing from OpenStreetMap, or it's mistakenly tagged as 'no bikes', or there's a busy road which cycle.travel is fervently trying to avoid... you can now turn the route-planner off between two points. It's pretty simple to use - add the via points as usual, then click the first of them and choose 'Go direct':



and the result is this...



Lots of other little improvements under the hood to improve the routing weightings, particularly in London and other large cities. UK and Western Europe live now, North America is currently chuntering away on my server and will be live in a day or two. Thank you, as ever, to everyone who's provided feedback (including one recent thread here where I spotted a good route someone had chosen, thought "why doesn't cycle.travel go that way by default?", and fixed it so it did ).

[Psamathe]

And by popular demand...

I'm really pleased to say that the much-requested feature to go direct between two via points is now live.

So if there's a path missing from OpenStreetMap, or it's mistakenly tagged as 'no bikes', or there's a busy road which cycle.travel is fervently trying to avoid... you can now turn the route-planner off between two points. It's pretty simple to use - add the via points as usual, then click the first of them and choose 'Go direct':



and the result is this...



Lots of other little improvements under the hood to improve the routing weightings, particularly in London and other large cities. UK and Western Europe live now, North America is currently chuntering away on my server and will be live in a day or two. Thank you, as ever, to everyone who's provided feedback (including one recent thread here where I spotted a good route someone had chosen, thought "why doesn't cycle.travel go that way by default?", and fixed it so it did :) ).

Sounds like a very useful feature. I never had any issues with that on cycle.travel but did using local routing on my Garmin where the GPS had no knowledge of a long established ferry so was routing me miles off-course on a detour so in the end I had to use 2 routes, one to the ferry departure and the next from the ferry arrival (only ¼ mile away). It was the Rozenberg-Maassluis ferry that every map marks so Garmin really should have known about it. So I can see it being useful on cycle.travel but never had the need for it on cycle.travel.

I thing I did learn this summer is how dependent the routing systems are on the quality of their mapping data. One cycle.travel route had me wading through a river (in truth the bike was in the river I was on the bank being torn-up by brambles and stung by nettles on the 6 inch wide bank!) But it all comes down to the quality of the mapping data so no fault in any mapping system. In fact the next person suffering the same overgrown track can blame me as I did note the location and lost my note so it's still "uncorrected".

Ian

[RickH]

And by popular demand...

I'm really pleased to say that the much-requested feature to go direct between two via points is now live.

So if there's a path missing from OpenStreetMap, or it's mistakenly tagged as 'no bikes', or there's a busy road which cycle.travel is fervently trying to avoid... you can now turn the route-planner off between two points. It's pretty simple to use - add the via points as usual, then click the first of them and choose 'Go direct':



and the result is this...



Lots of other little improvements under the hood to improve the routing weightings, particularly in London and other large cities. UK and Western Europe live now, North America is currently chuntering away on my server and will be live in a day or two. Thank you, as ever, to everyone who's provided feedback (including one recent thread here where I spotted a good route someone had chosen, thought "why doesn't cycle.travel go that way by default?", and fixed it so it did ).

Thank you for all the hard work you put into this baby of yours.

[aflook]

I've come late to this thread and haven't gone all the way back, so apologies if I'm repeating what others have said more eloquently.
What a fantastic tool cycle.travel is! I am more or less sure that any difficulties are down to either my incompetence or the accuracy of the OSM. Or both. I used CT to create a route from Geneva to Sicily last year and it was a fantastic, varied and mostly beautiful route. Italian roads were, however, somewhat tricky in that a supposedly paved route would suddenly disintergrate beneath my wheels, with just occasional strips of tarmac to show that it was once a road. Paths were sometimes impossible with a loaded tourer - or almost any bike except for the most hard-bitten of off-roaders. Is more information about road surface available? Some sort of algorithm to allow for differing regional standards?
I do miss the clarity of OS countour lines - I have found myself surprised by the number of ascents and descents in a short space (in Wales) and the route profile graphic I find misleading because the vertical scale is so inconsistent between different journeys. Could the contours be made a little darker? Chevrons put on the steepest inclines?
More specifically, coming out of Hebden Bridge going north on NCN 68, a wimp like me would rather avoid the cobbles and incline of Heptonstall but CT doesn't let me plot the route around it to the east. It took me three goes to believe it was viable, such was my faith in cycle.travel.
But really, hats off to Richard for this magnificent achievement - it's added hugely to my enjoyment of cycling over both short and long distances.

[RickH]

More specifically, coming out of Hebden Bridge going north on NCN 68, a wimp like me would rather avoid the cobbles and incline of Heptonstall but CT doesn't let me plot the route around it to the east. It took me three goes to believe it was viable, such was my faith in cycle.travel.
But really, hats off to Richard for this magnificent achievement - it's added hugely to my enjoyment of cycling over both short and long distances.

The problem looks like someone has marked a stile on Draper Lane, the road that bypasses Heptonstall, rather than putting it a short way along the footpath heading off south from the road. That would be my guess as to why CT isn't routing that way but I'm not sure how to fix it on the mapping.

While I'm on the subject of map editing, I found a cut through near Leigh recently that CT won't take (no link between 2 parts of a road that has been bollarded off to stop through car traffic but there is a gap that looks like it has been left deliberately for bikes to get through - Streetview) & cuts out a roundabout that gets queues of traffic at busy times. So I tried out the new "Direct" feature which worked to allow me to route that way (route - part of the way I use regularly to get between Horwich & Newton-le-Willows station), between points 1 & 2. I tried to do an edit to the mapping but got stuck on how to make a cycle/walk link between the 2 bits of road (probably easy but I didn't figure it out).

[Woodtourer]

As we are currently touring in Germany heading to Denmark and REALLY enjoying this route planner!!
We often have opportunity to tell other touring cyclists about it but we those, who are European, bring it up on their phones they have to pay to get it. Is the something normal?

[Richard Fairhurst]

No, that's definitely not normal! cycle.travel doesn't have any payment option on it so I'm slightly at a loss as to where that impression is coming from.

However... I wonder if it's one of those mendacious Google ads that says "DOWNLOAD NOW" or something like that, in an attempt to trick you into downloading some third-party software. To be honest the Google ads bring in tuppence-ha'penny anyway so I've just disabled them.

If you can see what's happening when they bring it up, I'd love to find out. (And thank you for telling other people about it - that's 100% the best way anyone can help the site!)

[Woodtourer]

I saw it on 2 different people's phone. Next time I will ask for a screenshot.

[Woodtourer]

I saw it on 2 different people's phone. Next time I will ask for a screenshot.