Alternative to Bike Route Toaster for touring in UK

[barneybear69]

Being a keen tourer (just in the UK for now) I've always used BRT and been very happy with the results including plotting my LEJOG on it.
This all came crumbling down in November when Google changed their API and BRT pulled their plotting until they could fix it.

Well, it's back now but IMO it's not a patch on what it was so I'm looking for an alternative.

My requirements are:
Free
able to plot routes including on and off road
Able to transfer route directly to my Garmin 800
NOT assume I'm riding on RH side of roads

Hopefully you will have tried alternatives.

Thanks in advance

[deckertim]

Bikehike.co.uk fits the bill. Even better than brt because you have a dual window that shows an os map which is ideal for seeing whether a road is actually a classified road or not.

[Tigger]

+1 for bikehike

[Tigerbiten]

Another plus for BikeHike.
If you want to follow an off-road cycle path, just follow it in the OS map or OSM cycle map. If you use the OSM cycle map you need to turn off follow roads. You soon learn how close together you need to click to follow turns.
It will do pan-europe as well, but the OS map doesn't work over the channel ......

[NUKe]

bike hikes routing even when set to bicycle takes me on a major trunk road from Ipswich to Bury st Edmunds not good. Other than that the 2 maps is excellent.Currently playing with QLandKarteGT on linux which has excellent routing but something has stopped the Debian version working.

[barneybear69]

Thanks folks,
Looks like I might have to give Bikehike some serious digging #steeplearningcurve

[RickH]

...If you use the OSM cycle map you need to turn off follow roads.

If you click on options one of those is to let you use OSM for routing and gives you Driving, walking or Cycling as routing options (Google routing only has driving & walking options & I'm not sure the walking option is much good).

Rick.

[pete75]

(Google routing only has driving & walking options & I'm not sure the walking option is much good).

Rick.

Not true, it has a bicycle option as well as the ones you mention. When you click on the cycle option it also shows what Google calls trails, dedicated lanes and cycle friendly roads.

[RickH]

(Google routing only has driving & walking options & I'm not sure the walking option is much good).

Rick.

Not true, it has a bicycle option as well as the ones you mention. When you click on the cycle option it also shows what Google calls trails, dedicated lanes and cycle friendly roads.

Google routing in BikeHike doesn't, at least not here (I was talking about the selectable options in BIkeHike). It is on Google maps own site you have the bicycle option (although I've found that to be rather patchy - some bike routes I know don't show up at all & in other places footpaths show up as bike routes).

Rick.

[CJ]

It depends on what you expect the site to do for you. Some of the people responding to this enquiry apparently want something akin to a motoring satnav, that will plot the optimum cycling route for them, all the way from start to finish.

Auto-routing, i.e. satnav, works very well for motoring, because public roads are now very well recorded by Google and other enterprises, and because apart from certain restrictions on large vehicles, that are also well documented, the optimum route for any car driver will good for any other car driver.

The same does not go for cycling, because there is no universal agreement or documentation on the relative suitability for cycling of different roads - never mind the variously good, bad or indifferent off-road cycling facilities - and because cyclists vary too much in their response to the trinty of cycling evils: traffic danger, poor surfaces and hills! So even assuming a system does have all the necessary data, not only on all the roads and their traffic, but also every track and path and its surface condition, and also has the capability of combining all that data with a terrain model, to really plan the best route for a cyclist from A to B, the result may nevertheless be quite a bad route for some other cyclist.

No auto-routing program or website is as good as a skilled and experienced human brain at optimising routes for cycling. That said, the computers are getting better and the main problem is poor data on off-road cycling facilities. For the traffic tolerant 'road warrior' who doesn't want to use those facilities anyway, that is not a problem and that kind of cyclist (who generally also does not mind how many hills are in the way!) is often very content with the tweaked in favour of minor roads but otherwise motoring-style satnav route he gets from the Edge-whatever GPS unit on his handlebars.

Route planning websites on the other hand, generally err too far in the other direction when tasked with planning a cycling route, sending the hapless rider down filthy bridleways or on time-wasting 'around all the houses' cycleways, and often taking little or no account of hills. That said, Cycle Travel does a not bad job (GB only) and is the one I'd use if I didn't have time to plan a route manually.

But mostly - always abroad - I do plan routes manually, referring to paper maps as well as online sources, then plot them out on Bikehike and save as GPX tracks, to be followed by eye on my Etrex.

[wirral_cyclist]

<SNIP>
That said, Cycle Travel does a not bad job (GB only) and is the one I'd use if I didn't have time to plan a route manually.

But mostly - always abroad - I do plan routes manually, referring to paper maps as well as online sources, then plot them out on Bikehike and save as GPX tracks, to be followed by eye on my Etrex.

I'm sure cycle.travel works in just about all of Europe, certainly OK in France and DE/AT/CH around Lake Constance.
I use cycle.travel to sense check my plotted routes - I do my start/finish and any stops and most times we agree!

[pwa]

About 15 years ago I worked on a project to promote cycling on lanes in the Vale of Glamorgan. One of the first things to do was to rate all the available lanes (of which there are many) according to criteria such as traffic levels, hilliness (a bad thing, since we were aiming at newbies) and so forth. Four of us produced four surprisingly different maps. We each rated the same roads very differently. It is a complicated matter deciding which route best serves a particular rider.