great european cycling planning tools

[sootster]

Hi, presently in the early stages of planning a fully supported european cycling expedition next year, as a charity event with work colleagues . basically Birmingham to Barcelona, Via Belgium,Holland, Germany, Switzerland, France and Spain,

Would appreciate suggestions on best route planning sites, we will be on road bikes and it is the plan to do it in 25 mile TT’s 24/7, our preference is not to be on major roads, but also not tracks, but even a site to do a quick planned route and then we can start drilling down further on each section to find a better route whilst continuing to calculate the distance .
Thanks in advance for any suggestions, appreciate one may not cover all countries (sadly viaMichelin cycling planner doesn't seam to work)

 

[suffolkcindy]

You could start with the European Cyclists Federation EuroVelo routes and maps?

 

[Yellow7]

Microsoft’s Autoroute. OK, as the name suggests it’s for cars but as you’re on road bikes you’ll be on roads. Running from your PC & not online it’s quick, there are various views such as terrain, political etc. Wey points can be clicked on-the-fly & preferred roads can be set to minimise motorway sections, if still plotted then using the ‘Avoid area’ boxes resolves that. Nearby banks, restaurants, hotels, campsites – all the normal, can be shown if required, along with mileage.

I used it for my initial tours across France & Spain and simply pasted the Autoroute map views into a Word document, that way any additional info can be added by using Word text boxes.

You can buy old ~ 2007 version on ebay for £20, which are fine as you don’t need the newest, fastest roads. Also all of europe is covered, if you use it you'll wonder why you'd not bought it before!...I'll offer you a money back guarantee!! '-)

I also used the US version ‘Streets & trips’ (also by Microsoft) to plot Route 66 before riding that.

Happy cyclin’!

 

[vernon]

Try www.viamichelin.com web site. It has a cycle option and chooses the quieter roads for cylist if you tick the cycle option when route planning. The maximum length of any stage is 200km so you'd have to break your proposed journey into 200km or smaller chunks. It's free too! It might not be working if you are using Firefox. It works perfectly fine with Google Chrome.

You could also try www.mapmyride.com which requires you to pick start and end points and it picks the route. It also produces a gradient profile.

 

[sootster]

Thanks Yellow& and Vernon, (for the tip on where I may have been going wrong on Michelin , unfortunately unless i'm looking in the wrong part of EDF i don't find it very useful for planning our own routing, I had a go at linking GPsie's near routes also but all the suggestions will gratefully help us bottom out the routing thanks again

 

[jay clock]

www.ridewithgps.com is my choice

 

[ceepeebee]

for Belgium and Southern Holland, this is a great way to plot routes using their node system - bit sad it doesn't go any further North into Holland as the Dutch ones aren't nearly as easy to use:
http://www.fietsnet.be/routeplanner/default.aspx