Cycle Holiday Mapping help - Eurovelo 5

[Boopop]

Mapping experts, please help.

I have a Garmin Edge 810 cycle computer, I'm pretty confident it'll serve me well (other than the occasional crash) on my upcoming EuroVelo Route 5 trip.

I've got all the stages I'll be riding on my Edge. What I'd really like, is a simple way to look at the route, and work out how many miles while remaining on the route it is until the next town, or village. Does anyone know of a way to do this? I've done 6 or 7 cycle tours now and I've always had to guess at this and it's quite frustrating. Some app that lets me do this with my GPX files would be great. I've already tried OSMAnd but when I load a track/route, and then select a point on the map, it just gives me the "as the crow flies" distance

Not hugely helpful.

I don't need this to go on my holiday, but it would make day to day planning so much easier, rather than just guessing using Google Maps etc. Cheers!

 

[HobbesOnTour]

Mapping experts, please help.

I have a Garmin Edge 810 cycle computer, I'm pretty confident it'll serve me well (other than the occasional crash) on my upcoming EuroVelo Route 5 trip.

I've got all the stages I'll be riding on my Edge. What I'd really like, is a simple way to look at the route, and work out how many miles while remaining on the route it is until the next town, or village. Does anyone know of a way to do this? I've done 6 or 7 cycle tours now and I've always had to guess at this and it's quite frustrating. Some app that lets me do this with my GPX files would be great. I've already tried OSMAnd but when I load a track/route, and then select a point on the map, it just gives me the "as the crow flies" distance

View attachment 687270 Not hugely helpful.

I don't need this to go on my holiday, but it would make day to day planning so much easier, rather than just guessing using Google Maps etc. Cheers!

Certainly not a mapping expert but this is what I'd do.....

First of all Osmand will do as you ask. Just forget about loading your current route. Let the app see where you are, pick the town and tell Osmand to navigate to it. It'll be more accurate if you have selected the car (for road, exclude motorways) or bike options. Unless you're a day's ride from the town it'll be pretty accurate. It'll give a good indication of gradient too. You can test this out at home. Osmand is a fantastic resource for the bike tourist, but unfortunately has a steep learning curve.

However, I'd go back to the start and use Cycle.Travel to plan the route (unless your routes are very long you should be able to import them).
There's a fantastic feature in CT whereby we can add a viapoint on our route and add a note to ourselves. In this way, looking at the map it's very easy to add all kinds of notes that should display on your GPS unit (assuming it offers TBT).
Whatever your preferred distance just add a point, write a note - 10km to X - and the job's done. On my (Wahoo) unit I can even scroll up to the note (to see how far away it is then see the distance to the place and know exactly how far I have to go.

I use it extensively for all kinds of things - start of climb , 2km to summit, last bar for X km... Whatever.

Loads of other very useful features for multi day touring too.

I suggest you create a few routes at home to test it out.

One (possible) word of warning. I cannot be sure but it's possible that if a TbT direction is in the vicinity of the waypoint it may override it. I've never noticed it, but I suppose that theoretically it's possible.

 

[Boopop]

Certainly not a mapping expert but this is what I'd do.....

First of all Osmand will do as you ask. Just forget about loading your current route. Let the app see where you are, pick the town and tell Osmand to navigate to it. It'll be more accurate if you have selected the car (for road, exclude motorways) or bike options. Unless you're a day's ride from the town it'll be pretty accurate. It'll give a good indication of gradient too. You can test this out at home. Osmand is a fantastic resource for the bike tourist, but unfortunately has a steep learning curve.

However, I'd go back to the start and use Cycle.Travel to plan the route (unless your routes are very long you should be able to import them).
There's a fantastic feature in CT whereby we can add a viapoint on our route and add a note to ourselves. In this way, looking at the map it's very easy to add all kinds of notes that should display on your GPS unit (assuming it offers TBT).
Whatever your preferred distance just add a point, write a note - 10km to X - and the job's done. On my (Wahoo) unit I can even scroll up to the note (to see how far away it is then see the distance to the place and know exactly how far I have to go.

I use it extensively for all kinds of things - start of climb , 2km to summit, last bar for X km... Whatever.

Loads of other very useful features for multi day touring too.

I suggest you create a few routes at home to test it out.

One (possible) word of warning. I cannot be sure but it's possible that if a TbT direction is in the vicinity of the waypoint it may override it. I've never noticed it, but I suppose that theoretically it's possible.

Unfortunately I leave tomorrow so no time to replot the routes 🤭. I'm likely to be riding 100 miles a day pretty regularly and they're not always direct routes, so it really does need to follow the route. Someone on a facebook group has suggested importing the routes in to komoot and it lets you work this out, so I may try that on my travels. I've put all the GPX files on my phone anyway so I'll be able to come up with new ways of doing it as I go.

Thanks for the suggestions

 

[Peter Salt]

Distance to next town/village. Umm... If you take your eyes off the head unit, you may notice some good old fashioned 'signs'.

These relics of the past usually have a name of the place, alongside a number - the number will correspond to the distance to said town/village.

Beware! On the mainland they use a something called the 'metric system' so you might find that the numbers are ticking down quicker than in the UK. Work of the devil.

 

[Boopop]

Distance to next town/village. Umm... If you take your eyes off the head unit, you may notice some good old fashioned 'signs'.

These relics of the past usually have a name of the place, alongside a number - the number will correspond to the distance to said town/village.

Beware! On the mainland they use a something called the 'metric system' so you might find that the numbers are ticking down quicker than in the UK. Work of the devil.

🤦‍♂️

Signs aren't really as accurate as I'd like if I'm not taking a direct route. Especially when the direct route is a dual carriageway. Thanks for trying though.

 

[Boopop]

I loaded the GPX files in to the Komoot app in the end, it was quite helpful. I didn't use it to navigate, but just to work out where the next town/village would be. It's a shame I can't do something similar with Strava. Anywho, I made it to Rome

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Mapping experts, please help.

I have a Garmin Edge 810 cycle computer, I'm pretty confident it'll serve me well (other than the occasional crash) on my upcoming EuroVelo Route 5 trip.

I've got all the stages I'll be riding on my Edge. What I'd really like, is a simple way to look at the route, and work out how many miles while remaining on the route it is until the next town, or village. Does anyone know of a way to do this? I've done 6 or 7 cycle tours now and I've always had to guess at this and it's quite frustrating. Some app that lets me do this with my GPX files would be great. I've already tried OSMAnd but when I load a track/route, and then select a point on the map, it just gives me the "as the crow flies" distance

View attachment 687270 Not hugely helpful.

I don't need this to go on my holiday, but it would make day to day planning so much easier, rather than just guessing using Google Maps etc. Cheers!

Look at it on Garmin Connect, as presumably you sent the stages to your Edge from there, as that’s the standard way.