Komoot: how to tell cycling & hiking apart?

[willmow]

I'm planning an adventurous hybrid e-bike tour through the Scottish Highlands using Komoot, much of it off-road gravel though not pure MTB. I'm finding it hard to distinguish on the Komoot map between paths/ways that are best suited for walking and those that are ok for bikes. I don't want to annoy walkers by cycling where I shouldn't. Any tips? [This may be a redundant question if Scotland does not distinguish between footpaths and bridleways as in England...]

[Jdsk]

Welcome

I'm planning an adventurous hybrid e-bike tour through the Scottish Highlands using Komoot, much of it off-road gravel though not pure MTB. I'm finding it hard to distinguish on the Komoot map between paths/ways that are best suited for walking and those that are ok for bikes. I don't want to annoy walkers by cycling where I shouldn't. Any tips? [This may be a redundant question if Scotland does not distinguish between footpaths and bridleways as in England...]

"Understanding public rights of way":
https://www.ramblers.org.uk/go-walking- ... rights-way
has the differences between England and Scotland.

Jonathan

[Nearholmer]

There are two questions: nature of the surface, and Rights of Way, and while I know nothing about rights of way/access in Scotland, I can comment on the nature of surfaces.

Once you go off-road, there is an element of pot-luck, or exploration, as regards surfaces, because although I understand OpenStreetMap, which Komoot, CycleTravel, and CycleStreets all use as underlying mapping, contains coding (symbols) options* that should give guidance about the surface, huge amounts aren’t coded correctly. This is understandable given the vast mileages of paths in Britain, and the relatively small number of individuals who generously devote their free time to coding in OSM.

My experience is that if a route is coded as a track (two dashed black lines in parallel) you can usually cycle it, although it might be pretty rough in places, and you might have to ford streams. If it is coded as a path in a rural area (which includes many sections of bridleways in England) things get more interesting, because it can range from a nice, fine-gravel path a couple of metres wide, to nothing whatsoever visible on the ground, except shoulder-high vegetation, and/or a swamp; I’ve even come across bits that are coded as cycle paths, but turn out to be deep and wide drainage ditches in reality!

I actually find that I can often discern more about what I’m likely to come across from Ordnance Survey maps, than from OSM, because if you read them carefully you can understand slopes, the direction that water will be running, whether there are springs on shallow slopes (= bogs and mud), things like that. OS also shows hedge-lines, which are crucial clues on a lot of English bridleways, where it’s easy to loose the line of the path if it’s not a well-used one. Google maps satellite view can be very useful too.

If you’re not up for too much exploration/adventure/walking/carrying-your-bike, it might be best to use Komoot to find routes that cyclists have already travelled.

*The dashes or dots get finer as the surface becomes less good and the way less clear on the ground.

PS: something I do know from people who ride “gravel’ in Scotland is that in some areas deer fences can be an obstacle. There can be a 12ft high fence and locked gate across a track, and access is provided by a stile over the fence that resembles a couple of loft ladders, which isn’t at all easy to negotiate with a bike.

[Paulatic]

One of the features of Komoot is to zoom into the map and click on those little green dots. Photo evidence of the track condition.

[drossall]

In the Scottish countryside, my understanding is that you can cycle pretty-much anywhere that you can walk, provided that you do so responsibly and with respect for walkers and others. See for example the header text on this page.

[pjclinch]

Our recent off-road tours (around Angus & Perthshire have benefitted greatly from Strava Heat Maps. It turns out that if something's a goer it's pretty easy to tell that from the traffic that's been along it, and where you see off detours in woods or the like you can see that there are ways around storm damage.
Other off-road route collections like Trail Forks are pretty good in helping see what folk have done.

While the two-lines/one line differentiation is generally pretty good it certainly isn't a guarantee.

Pete.