Route Mapping

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olliem121

New Member
Hi All,

I'm new to all this. As the football season is over I decided to take up cycling to keep up my fitness. I have become totally addicted to it now, find it really rewarding. I love the distance I can cover on my road bike and I plan to explore lots of new areas.

Whats the best way to map out my routes? This is important to me as i'm a bit of a stat/geography geek and I like to review my work. Currently I am using Google Maps to draw my routes - link http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?hl...d=205563434876269700957.0004a092b316bf58834a8

It looks ok but its going to get really congested soon. Is there a website that is better for this sort of thing? I also find it really difficult to draw a route exactly where its intended using the "draw a line along a road" feature, especially any routes overlap. Is that just me?

Also if anyone is from the area it would be great to be recommended some interesting routes or places to visit - I plan to do 100mile routes by the end of the summer!

Good luck to me.
 
ianrauk

ianrauk

Tattooed Beat Messiah
Location
Rides Ti2
Bike Hike

Here

It would help to let people know where you are.
 
OP
OP
O

olliem121

New Member
ianrauk said:
Bike Hike

Here

It would help to let people know where you are.
Click to expand...

I didnt get on too well with Bike Hike if im honest. It has some interesting details, but it doesnt seem very good for recording and displaying multiple routes.

It also uses Google Maps which i am currently using
 
K

kedgeree

Regular
Location
Perth
Olliem, I've got a garmin forerunner which tracks your position / speed / elevation etc. Plug it in at the end of your run and it'll show your route on a map & various options such as transferring to google earth etc. I got it for birthday but I think they're about £120.

It came with a heart monitor as well but I rarely use that - the chart looks like I should probably be in hospital! Also if you put in Aylesbury in the site you'll see other peoples' routes around Aylesbury. It's a bit fiddly though but quite good for route planning.
 
T

tone-s

New Member
Wow, you've just started cycling and you're belting out 25mph averages around the Chilterns! You won't find many ride buddies...

:whistle:
 
deptfordmarmoset

deptfordmarmoset

Full time tea drinker
Location
Armonmy Way
If you like maps on a budget without wanting GPS, Quo V.2 is pretty good. ( mapyx.com ) The software is free and there are free trial maps (plus the open street maps for the UK) that you can download to get the hang of it. I tend to use their OS 1:25.000 ''tiles'' that you can buy for around £2 a 10 sq km tile. They're fully scaleable and you get all the usual stuff like elevation profiles and uploadability, etc.

I'll often print out a couple of OS sheets to take out with me if it looks like a particular section of a route looks complicated. And I don't know whether this is going to keep on happening but, recently, when I've taken out a map by the roadside to look at where I'm going next, young women have been coming up to me and offering me advice on the local topography.
 
C

chris-s

New Member
Location
Truro
Or if you have a smartphone/android/iphone, try one of the many apps. Cyclemeter + Iphone is a great combination.

Chris
 
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Ianpascal

New Member
I've been struggling to find good route mapping but came across Mapmyride.com over the weekend. First impressions are that it works well for me. Easy to stick to roads, which is what I do. It shows elevation as well and even classifies the climbs, if there are any worth classifying. Put in your time and it will give you average speed too. All in all, the best of the ones I have looked at. I ride Hants/Surrey/Sussex. Slowly...
 
briantrumpet

briantrumpet

Legendary Member
Location
Devon & Die
deptfordmarmoset said:
If you like maps on a budget without wanting GPS, Quo V.2 is pretty good. ( mapyx.com ) The software is free and there are free trial maps (plus the open street maps for the UK) that you can download to get the hang of it. I tend to use their OS 1:25.000 ''tiles'' that you can buy for around £2 a 10 sq km tile. They're fully scaleable and you get all the usual stuff like elevation profiles and uploadability, etc.

I'll often print out a couple of OS sheets to take out with me if it looks like a particular section of a route looks complicated. And I don't know whether this is going to keep on happening but, recently, when I've taken out a map by the roadside to look at where I'm going next, young women have been coming up to me and offering me advice on the local topography.
Click to expand...
I prefer maps to GPS, so use Quo too, and like the fact that you can just print out the bits you can't remember. And if those sheets get drowned during the ride, you haven't ruined an expensive map.

My only gripe is that you can't get it to automatically follow a road from one waypoint to the next: you always have to plot it point by point, which is tiresome on wobbly roads. It doesn't take that long, but it's not as speedy as bikeroutetoaster etc. On the plus side, the elevation data is much more detailed and accurate, as it uses precise OS data at 50m horizontal resolution.
 
exbfb

exbfb

Active Member
From the OPs original link to bike routes on Google.
Bike Ride 8.
52.2 mile in 1hr 55mins.

27.18 mph average ?

I think you need to join a club and go and do some time trials by the look of things.
 
mcshroom

mcshroom

Bionic Subsonic
Location
Egremont, Cumbria
briantrumpet said:
My only gripe is that you can't get it to automatically follow a road from one waypoint to the next: you always have to plot it point by point, which is tiresome on wobbly roads. It doesn't take that long, but it's not as speedy as bikeroutetoaster etc. On the plus side, the elevation data is much more detailed and accurate, as it uses precise OS data at 50m horizontal resolution.
Click to expand...

Two options to deal with that problem in quo. There is an option to get it to follow a set colour which sort of works, pr my method of using Bikehike to plan shrink the waypoints to about 150-200, then opening the route in Quo to fine tune it.
 
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