Koomot

[cyberknight]

Strava looks ok for route planning but I don't think I would use it enough to justify the cost £6 a month I know it's not much.

its a good planner , i have tried many others and they seem to come up short with various routing errors , i use strava for planning routes for club rides so its worth it for me

 

[TAV]

Yeah I think I'm going to go for Strava

 

[PaulSB]

@HobbesOnTour myself and a couple of friends are planning to do a lot of gravel riding this summer. We've been looking at planners and decided Komoot would be the best option.

I haven't looked at cycle.travel yet. I wondered if you feel it would be good for this sort of planning?

 

[HobbesOnTour]

@HobbesOnTour myself and a couple of friends are planning to do a lot of gravel riding this summer. We've been looking at planners and decided Komoot would be the best option.

I haven't looked at cycle.travel yet. I wondered if you feel it would be good for this sort of planning?

I don't know is the short answer!
Sorry! Not terribly helpful!

I think different planners may be better in different areas and possibly for surfaces, but I have no evidence for that, only a feeling. I do know Komoot will throw me onto any old surface even in roadbike mode.

I have only deliberately sought out off-road routes twice, in order to test out a trailer. Both times I looked for routes close to me on RWGPS (I'm not even sure if I can do that now without a sub). All I wanted was rough terrain, I didn't care about anything else.

As a general rule, I'm not bothered if a route is all paved or not. My bike will go pretty much anywhere.
Two things concern me based on experience - will a route bring me to a dead end or put me on a road that no bike should be on?
Komoot has done both to me, albeit in places quite far from where you are. Cycle.travel? None that I can recall.

Cycle.travel has a paved/unpaved toggle so I see no reason why it wouldn't work. Off-road, Google Street View won't work, though, so if that's your thing you'll need another source to have a good peek.

Of course, your question is better asked of @Richard Fairhurst

There are possible legal issues, I believe, with bike access on some paths, as well as practical issues where farmers, for example, have placed fences/gates. Not a problem if you're walking, a bigger issue with a bike. I'm not sure if Komoot has as good a handle of the British path labelling as cycle.travel.
I'l also aware of issues in NL & Germany with cyclists using traditionally hiking routes and causing friction.

As with any planner in places that you don't know it can be a risk. Alternatives may be fewer or non-existant in out of the way places if you hit a dead end. Then, a cool group of friends is important

Sorry! Not a lot of help!

You could try "test routes" comparing one to the other and get a feel if one suggests routes more to your preference than the other. (That's what I've done).
Also, Google is your friend. People post gps files of their routes all the time. Or Youtube!
At the risk of stating the bleedin' obvious, it's entirely possible Komoot will create the best route here, and cycle.travel there!

Good luck!

 

[IaninSheffield]

Just used both cycle.travel and http://brouter.de/brouter-web/ to plot a route around the UK coastline. Both produced very similar, equally 'good' routes with only subtle differences. I felt that cycle.travel handled routing across estuaries (via ferries) with more aplomb. Both allow downloading of gpx files for uploading to navigation device of choice. With an account however, cycle.travel allows saving of routes, making subsequent editing easier. There is a workaround by which this can be done with brouter, but it's messy.

 

[Richard Fairhurst]

cycle.travel doesn't (currently) have an off-road routing option. You can plan an off-road route with it, but it won't naturally follow the rougher tracks - it will tend to choose quiet, paved roads/paths where available. You can get round this by adding lots of via points, but it might be a bit tiresome. I believe Komoot does have a "gravel bike" mode, though as Hobbes alludes, I don't think it's quite as adept at dealing with rights-of-way information as cycle.travel is (but then I would say that ).

Some fun new stuff coming on cycle.travel later this week... watch this space!

 

[Tribansman]

I haven't used komoot but love cycle.travel, it's a fantastic site and planner and has helped me discover some wonderfully quiet roads and routes.

The only thing I would say - and this applies to all planners I've used - is if it's a particularly long route through unfamiliar territory that I'm completely reliant on, I always have a detailed check through and tweak to make sure it's exactly as i want it. For example, cycle travel's algorithms to use the quietest roads can lead to pretty lengthy/slow routes through towns and cities and as I prioritise directness over quietness on long routes, I'll tweak here by dragging the route line (it would be nice if this functionality worked on phones, as currently I have to do this on my laptop), which then adds loads of via points, which you can further move around to tweak the route if needed.

The addition of the paved/unpaved toggle was a real plus as I'd been caught out on my road bike before when a couple of the paths were too boggy to cycle and have found this pretty much foolproof other than a couple of roads that may have been paved years ago but now struggle to fit that definition!

So I guess what I'm saying is that it's unlikely any route planning tool will plot the perfect route for you and if you're in unfamiliar territory or have a unit that doesn't reroute on the go, it pays dividends to put in a bit of time beforehand to check you're happy with the route. But if you'd rather just put in start and end and take it as it is, you'd be hard pressed to beat cycle.travel for quality and reliability of route.

If I'm doing shorter routes I want to be particular about, I'll plot point by point using strava, although their basemap doesn't seem to be consistent in terms of how it treats paths / permissable paths / paved roads.

 

[Lostagain]

Just throw in my own experience with Komoot. Generally pretty easy to use both for plotting routes and recording. I have had difficulty on occasion with plotting a route, with Komoot insisting I take a particular road, even when I have changed the route. Doesn't seem to like me trying to plot a circular route e.g. start and finish at home, and there is a tendency to lose satellite connection when out on the bike. I do however like the community aspect and the posting of rides, which gives me ideas for rides.

 

[HobbesOnTour]

From an email I received yesterday...

Scenic routing

I’m delighted to unveil a big upgrade to cycle.travel’s route-finding – scenic routing.

cycle.travel already uses road/path quality, climb and steepness, and traffic levels to find the best route. Now it has a fourth string to its bow: scenery. Given two otherwise similar routes, cycle.travel will now try to choose the most scenic of the two.

It’s best explained by example. Previously, if you asked cycle.travel for a route from Manchester to Liverpool, it would follow the East Lancs Road – a rather uninspiring cycleway beside a busy dual carriageway. Now, it chooses a route via the (newly upgraded) Bridgewater Canal towpath and Trans-Pennine Trail – a much more enjoyable ride.

And

The difference is subtle but noticeable, particularly on longer routes: your route around town probably won’t be affected much. Of course, this feeds into the ‘suggest a ride’ feature too. Making this all work involves some really complex calculations behind the scenes, and I’m continuing to tweak these to get the best results.

Have a play – head to https://cycle.travel/map and see what lovely routes you can plan!

 

[HobbesOnTour]

I know I'm quoting your post again, and I know I probably come across as some kind of a pimp for cycle.travel but it now has (a subscriber only) option to use Ordnance Survey maps.
My understanding of such maps is that they give great detail for planning purposes.
Possibly worth a shot for more off road routing?

 

[goosegog]

windy.com is good too. Has the ability to create gpx or kml to export to your device... has the added bonus for me, I can see the wind direction so I can if need be work a route out with the wind in my favour