-
This is my current favourite: https://cycle.travel/map/journey/210889 although I still need to find a better way around Crawley.
I am intrigued by the the cycle.travel mapping tool you are using. Is the algorithm it uses to automatically generate cycle routes any good?
Nick_S-
Yes. It tries to fit your route to known cycle routes based on the open bikefiets cycle maps.
In general you enter the start and end points and see what it suggests.Ity can be overly cautious as it will try to avoid major roads at all costs, but sometimes you might be happy enough to ride on a major road for a few miles rather than through unknown sidestreets for 2-3x as far. You can click on a road and open in it Streetview, or see if there are geotagged images from the same location.
For finding what a bridleway looks like, this latter feature is excellent.
Where it does fall down is that it will not route you onto one-way footpaths. So if there is no exit, it won't let you go there, even though it's obvious it's a real route (these paths are usually there because the open streetmap data is incomplete). So sometimes you end up creating routes that don't properly work and have to import them into Kommute or something to close the links. Usually I make notes and memorise the route.
I've found some amazing routes and trails beciuase of it and that includes a lot of "hidden" infrastructure that looks dodgy as fuck on a map, but turns out to be excellent.
Alex_B
Well, it was the mud that really killed it for me, but I have to say that if I wanted a long epic ride, I'd do the Guildford > SDW > Guildford ride that I did a couple of weeks back. That ride was much more scenic and more interesting riding, covering almost all the same variety of terrain.
On this one there were too many gates, too many unclear paths that might or might not have been bridlepaths, too many routes through fields that turned out not to have an exit etc... it was also incredibly overgrown in places, so I was properly fighting off brambles and nettles in places.
This is my current favourite: https://cycle.travel/map/journey/210889 although I still need to find a better way around Crawley.