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chauvinSimon / my_route_planning_recipe

A general recipe to efficiently create routes for outdoor activities (🥾, 👟, 🚲, 🏃, 🚴, 🚵)

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( ⌛ If some animations are not loaded, try to refresh the page. 🔁 )

🗺️ MY ROUTE PLANNING RECIPE 🤸

On this page, I would like to share my approach to designing routes for outdoor activities like hike, run or cycling.

⚠️ The methodology presented here may not be flawless:

  • Written in 2023: the showcased features may well become outdated or improved over time.
  • Not exhaustive: be sure to visit the missing tools section.
    • Perhaps you are already aware of existing alternatives, or you have ideas and time to create solution, in which case please check the Your suggestions section. 🙏

📜 The recipe in short 🧑‍🍳

1) get inspiration
2) connect the dots
3) check and adjust

Content

My favourite sections are marked with ⭐.

🛠️ Essential tools

Before I begin, I would like to briefly introduce two key tools, which will be used in the following sections:

  • komoot
  • strava global heatmap

The majority of the showcased features are accessible with a basic free account. 😃

Disclaimer: It is worth noting that while I find some of their tools fascinating, I do not have any vested interest in promoting komoot and strava.

🟢 Komoot

Click to expand

komoot is a comprehensive route planning and navigation app, available on both web and mobile platforms.

In their own words: "our technology allows everybody to better find, plan and live authentic outdoor experiences."

komoot_intro.gif
komoot provides a wide range of features. Here is a brief example of how to easily draw a (albeit long 😅) hiking route.

🟠 Strava global heatmap ♨️

Click to expand

The strava global heatmap is a visual representation that displays the routes where individuals are running, hiking, and cycling worldwide.

It can be accessed in high-resolution with a free strava account (let's hope it stays that way!).

strava_display_settings.gif
strava global heatmap: modifying the display settings to red, label, standard, and applying only by foot (:athletic_shoe:) / only by bike (:bike:) filters.

As mentioned in the still missing section, it would be nice to have finer filters:

  • For instance only by mountain-bike (:mountain_bicyclist:) and only by road-bike (:bicyclist:)
winter_map_style.gif
The winter map style 🏔️ often provides a clear depiction of the terrain, even for summer activities.

To learn more, refer to:

1 🤩 Get inspired

📸 The goal of this first section is to discover interesting places in a given destination region.

⚠️ Please note that this section is NOT about:

💡 "Inspiration" can be divided into two categories:

  • 📍 Points, e.g. a place such a lake, a viewpoint, a summit ...
  • 🛤️ Routes, e.g. a tour recommended by a book or completed by someone else.

⚠️ The methods introduced below are very diverse: some may not be relevant for your specific destination and/or activity.

Note: if you already know the region well, you can jump directly to the next section about drafting routes 😉

1.1 📌 Points

🟢 Komoot Highlights

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They are the red dots you see on the komoot planning map

"Every Highlight is a personal recommendation that you know you can trust. They are created by the community, for the community".

komoot_highlights.gif
komoot Highlights can give a first idea of what to do and what to see. Users comments can provide valuable information.

💡 Tips:

  • Zoom out to show only a few dots: these are the top Highlights.
  • Check the number of recommendations and the level of popularity.
  • Reading users comments can be valuable for:
    • Learning more, such as the difficulty of a descent, if bicycles are allowed, or information on fares and times for a cable train.
    • Getting the latest updates, for example if a trail has been recently affected by a fallen tree.
  • Verify the date of the comments.
  • While komoot Highlights are mostly points (i.e. places), they can also be segments like a nice single-track.
  • komoot Highlights can be found both in komoot/places-to-see and in komoot/plan modes.

✈️ Google travel

Click to expand

Google Things To Do is a search tool that allows travelers to research attractions, tours and activities.

  • It is planned to be integrated to google.com in November 2023.
google_travel.gif
The things-to-do section of google travel can give a good overview of popular places in a given region. Bookmarking favourite places can be convenient.

💡 Tips:

  • Mark places you like with the bookmark symbol 🔖: they will be added to your google travel plans list and will be available in the Saved places sections of Google Maps.
  • The bookmarked places can be visualized on a smartphone, as demonstrated below.
google_saved_places.gif
The saved places can be seen in Google Maps, here on a android smartphone, which can give a convenient summary of what you would like to visit.

ℹ️ Tourist information website

Click to expand

Touristic information resources can help discovering about the region, especially the events calendar. 📆

tourist_information.gif
Discovering highlights of a region as well as the main events happening there.

💡 Tips:

  • Check the advantages offered by the guest card of the region: 🎫
    • For instance a free ride with the local cable car might inspire you to start your tour from a top station of the cable car. 🚠

📚 Books and blogs

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Travel guide books are huge sources of information and inspiration. They sometimes suggest itineraries or "visiting ... in 1/2/3 days" plans.

travel_guide_book.gif
google books can provide previews of some (not all) travel guide books. Here looking for inspiration in Provence.

💡 Tips:

  • Check the year of edition.
  • Buying or lending used travel guide books can be a good option.

Travel and adventure blogs can also be very inspiring. ✍️

blog.gif
Example of a traveller blog, full of tips and even a My Maps (My Maps is covered in a next section).

💡 Tips:

  • Search for "things to see/do [your destination]" in google search.
  • Want to take nice pictures to share with your friends and family?
    • Then search for "instagram-able spots [your destination]". 🤳

🌐 Around.us

Click to expand

"around.us is a free, interactive, and easy-to-use global tourist guide designed to help you discover monuments and natural sites around you."

I discovered this tool in a French podcast, where the author explains how he used ChatGPT to develop around.us. 🤖

aroundus.gif
around.us offers in one glance an overview of things to see in a given region. It comes with pictures and a short description.

🎒 Guided tours

Click to expand

This method may be less straightforward. It involves reading the descriptions of guided tours to understand where the guides usually take their guests to show them the best places in the region.

  • Keep in mind some possible limitations:
    • Tours derived from such descriptions may not be feasible on your own: sometimes a bus-shuttle is arranged by the guiding company.
    • Descriptions are often sparse to keep the exact track undisclosed. 😉
    • Not very quick: retrieving names and locating them on a map could be tedious.
  • Nevertheless, the mentioned names can be enough to get a good idea of the places to visit.
ayapana.gif
This website offers six guided tours. In the animation, names of places (in French) are successively highlighted. They could give hints about the best spots where to ride mountain-bike on La Réunion island.

🕵️ Geocaching

Click to expand

This game, similar to treasure hunting, can provide location ideas for outdoor activities.

geocaching.gif
Looking for geocaches with high favourite points and a reasonable terrain difficulty. Then trying to find on the map a cluster of them. Here for example a zone with 6 traditional caches is discovered. It could be great to make an activity out of them, e.g. an hiking tour.

💡 Tips:

  • If there are too many caches available, filter by favourite points (FP) to focus on the most popular ones.
  • Idea for improvement: the favorite points (FP) should be scaled by the number of visits:
    • For example a cache found 20 times with 20 FP should stand out more than one found 10,000 time with only 25 FP.
  • A geocaching tour can sometimes be more motivating for children than a simple hike. 🤸

🅿️ Parking

Click to expand

A car park may be necessary to determine the starting point of the activity.

parking.gif
One option is to search for "parking" on Google Maps, possibly using the satellite view, cross-check with Google Street View, and review the latest comments about the parking places to gather details such as size, price, and operating hours.

💡 Tips:

  • komoot highlights, and their users comments, can also provide valuable information about parking options.

🧗 Hilly spots

Click to expand

Above sections were mainly about finding attractive places with nice views. 📸

But you may also want to look for training spots. 💪 For instance for an uphill/downhill workout.

Several options are available to find a spot for uphill/downhill training:

  • ⛰️ You can inspect a map with a terrain or 3d layer, and identify non-flat areas.
    • For instance google maps with terrain layer, or strava-global-heatmap with the winter map style (which renders the terrain very well, as illustrated in the strava global heatmap section).
  • 🏆 You can also use strava-segments:
    • They are portions of roads or trails created by strava members where athletes can compare times.
    • Use a strava segment explorer (either from doogal.co.uk, which offers more filters, or from strava) and apply filters such as average grade, elevation diff or climb category to retrieve uphill/downhill segments.
uphill.gif
This example shows how to look for a place in the north of Munich with cycling climbs. The strava-global-heatmap, with the winter map style, gives a good overview of the terrain: an area with slope is identified (Schloss Ottenburg). Zooming in, a small yet hilly round tour is discovered. This place could be very good for an uphill workout 🏋️. Then the example switches website and uses the strava segment explorer of doogal.co.uk. The Schloßberg segment (530m at 5.3%) is discovered (same hill as the one previously found using the strava-global-heatmap). Finally, the official strava segment explorer is used, but its filter features are really limited: only the climb category criteria, which does not even retrieve the Schloßberg segment (probably it is not steep/long enough).

💡 Tip:

  • Quäldich (literally "torture yourself" in German) references road-cycling climbs (more than 8000 entries, mainly in Europe). ⛰️
    • Climbs are evaluated by users, who also post comments and pictures.
    • A tour-planning software can be downloaded.
      • Similarly to the strava-global-heatmap, activities of Quäldich users are collected, aggregated and displayed on the map and help planning routes.

🗺️ My maps

Click to expand

How to visualize all the ideas you have collected from diverse sources?

One solution is My Maps from Google.

"My Maps makes it easy for you to create beautiful maps and share them with others."

my_maps.gif
My Maps can be convenient to gather and visualize all the ideas you have been collecting. Places can be organized in layers: e.g. important (showing the accomodation, the train station, ...), view points, food (for the recommended restaurants and bakeries you fancy to try), beaches, markets, bike rentals, ...

💡 Tips:

  • It can be a good strategy to choose the location for your accommodation based on your My Maps that shows an overview of what you want to do in a given region.

My Maps can also be used to get inspired; some people share their maps. 🤗

my_maps_others.gif
Finding some My Maps online and get inspired by it.

💡 Tips:

  • To find My Maps of other people, search for "[your destination] My Maps" in Google Search Image and select the images that look like a My Maps.
  • You can export a My Maps found online, and import it into yours.
  • .gpx files can also be uploaded to a My Maps.

1.2 Routes

☝️ We continue here section 1 - get inspired, which is about finding ideas before creating a route (section 2) and verifying it section 3.

  • Ideas in the form of "waypoints" have been collected in the previous subsection (1.1 points).
  • This subsection focuses on finding inspiration from already existing routes.

🖥️ Nowadays .gpx files of routes can easily be found online but there are a few problems:

  • Tons of routes are available - it is too much!
  • Many are redundant.
  • Some are outdated / infeasible / dangerous.

❓ This raises the question:

  • How to find nice tours in a given region that help you prepare yours?

🟢 Komoot

Three methods using komoot are introduced:

🟢1 - 👍 Tour suggestions
Click to expand

"The komoot tour suggestions you receive through the search function consist exclusively of automatically generated Tour recommendations, known as Smart tours." 🧞

komoot_suggestion.gif
Based on the activity type and filters, tours are suggested by the komoot-search-engine.

Learn out more in this article.

🟢2 - 📚 Collections
Click to expand

komoot Collections are compilations of multiple tours in a specific region. For instance:

  • Some private users share their multiple-day trips.
  • Some tourism agencies promote their region by showcasing examples of tours.

komoot Collections can be browsed in this page.

komoot_collection.gif
Looking for a komoot Collection about "crossing the Alps with the mountain bike" - example of a collection created by user.
komoot_collection_val_di_sole.gif
Example of a Collection created by a tourism agency to promote its region.
🟢3 - 📌 Suggestions around a highlight
Click to expand

It is possible to receive suggestions for tours that include a place you have found (see the related section as komoot Highlight.

komoot_suggestion_around_highlight.gif
Searching for hike around a komoot highlight: the suggestion system is the same as above, i.e. tours are automatically generated.

⛰️ Outdoor-active

Click to expand

The route finder tool of outdoor-active is similar to that of komoot.

  • However, recommended tours are not generated by an engine; instead, they have been created by users.
outdoor_active.gif
Routes can easily be found with the "Route Finder" of outdoor-active.

💡 Tips:

  • If too many results are shown, apply the Top routes filter to only keep the best ones.
  • Routes marked as "premium" cannot be fully visualized, however:
    • The small preview is often enough to understand the track or re-create it on your own.
    • The name of the tour can be searched for in a search-engine to find the .gpx on other websites.

🟠 Strava

Three methods using strava are introduced:

🟠1 - ♨️ Strava global heatmap
Click to expand

☝️ In my opinion, the very first step when searching for activities in a region should be to consult the strava global heatmap

strava_heatmap_logonna.gif
A clear overview can quickly be gained: while this area does not seems to offer many options for cycling tours, it seems very popular for hiking. Tours can easily be imagined following the "hot" paths.
strava_pump_track.gif
The strava global heatmap can be used to discover popular trails. In this example a pump track for mountain bike is discovered by zooming in.
🟠2 - 💅 Strava-premium suggestions
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Similar to the komoot suggestion system, i.e. with automatically generated tour recommendations, but exclusive to premium account holders.

  • More details here.
🟠3 - 👀 Strava activities via segments
Click to expand

This is a more advanced method.

Currently, there is no direct "search for others' activities" feature in strava.

🧑‍🍳 Here is my method to find activities, using the segment explorer:

  • 1- Open the strava segment explorer (strava.com -> Explore -> Segment Explore).
  • 2- Choose one segment near your target destination.
    • ☝️ Ensure that the "number of attempts" of this segment is not too small.
  • 3- In the page of the segment, the leaderboard section (ranking of strava users) gives you access to each activity that includes this segment.
    • ☝️ Verify that they are recent.
strava_segments_974_volcan.gif
What about riding close to the Piton de la Fournaise vulcano 🌋? Look for strava segments close to this place. The one on the cliff looks be beautiful, doesn't it? With 250 attempts, it seems fairly popular. In the leaderboard section, open multiple (here 5) activities that are recent (2023 at the time of writing) and finally compare them to get inspired.

📕 Rother

Click to expand

Rother is a German publisher known for producing popular guides for outdoor activities, primarily focused on hiking. 🥾

  • This resource can be very valuable to quickly get detailed overviews of great tours in a given region.

🧑‍🍳 My recipe:

  • 1- Search for "Rother [YOUR DESTINATION]" in a search engine.
  • 2- Open the corresponding Rother page.
  • 3- Among the preview images, you can find tour ideas using:
    • The "overview map".
    • The "table of contents".
rother_island.gif
Example of Rother edition for Iceland 🇮🇸. The Rother map offers an excellent overview of where to hike on the island. The table of contents provides the names of each tour, which can usually easily be searched for to get more details: in this example, the tour #22 - Hengifoss is google-searched and successfully found on another website (outdoor-active) which provides a corresponding .gpx file too.

💡 Tips:

  • The Rother table of contents lists the tours and marks some of them as TOP, whereas the Rother map does not show by default which tours are the TOP ones.
    • Manually highlighting them can enrich the map overview.
  • Rother editions are often updated. Therefore, ensure you are using the newest version.
  • Details of recommended tours can usually be found online, very easily, based on their name.
    • Cross-check information from multiple websites.
rother_highlight_top.gif
Highlighting the tours marked as TOP, based on the Rother table of contents, can enrich the map overview.

💡 Tips:

  • This map overview can help choosing a location for an accomodation place from which multiple top tours can be easily accessed.
    • In the example above, two clusters of TOP tours appear at first sight: 34+40+41 and 59+61+65.
    • Other info such as accessibility (e.g. bus lines or road from an airport) should be considered as well.
  • If you like, you can buy the (second-hand) Rother book, e-book or app and get direct access to the .gpx files.

🗞️ Magazines

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Some outdoor magazines publish inspiring travel reports about specific regions, typically accompanied by beautiful pictures and documented tours.

Such articles often come with a link to the tours, for instance this one.

mountainbike_magazin.jpg
Tours included in a reportage about Vosges by mountainbike-magazin in 12/2022.
komoot_mountainbike_magazin.gif
The corresponding komoot collection, and an overview of the numerous other collections published by mountainbike-magazin.

🖥️ Blogs

Click to expand

Some enthusiastic local hikers enjoy sharing their best tours and offering insider tips, for instance Sieben Inseln

dagmar.gif
👍 Kudos to Dagmar from Sieben Inseln who documents for free many hikes in her region.

🎊 Past events

Click to expand

Are you interested in walking, running, or riding a route of a past event, such as a race?"

In some cases the .gpx of the route can easily be retrieved ...

kufsteiner_radmarathon.gif
Some events let you check the details of the course, with a nice map, and sometimes even offer the .gpx file.

... but this is not always the case, consider this example:

transterritoire_70km.png
How to retrieve an accurate route from this image?

🖍️ One option is to try to manually draw the route, e.g. with komoot, trying to match the line on the image with paths known by komoot / strava heatmap.

  • Issue: apart from being tedious, this approach may not be possible given the low resolution of the image.

👀 Another option is to look for the strava account of a participant who recorded this activity and made it publicly available?

  • But what if you do not know anyone who took part to the event?

🔍 A third option would be to look for strava activities having the name of the event (e.g. "transterritoire 2023").

  • But strava does not offer such "find an activity by name" feature.

🧑‍🍳 Here is my (a bit advanced) recipe:

  • 1- Find a strava segment on the course (see Tips below).
  • 2- Check the leaderboard of this strava segment, which lists strava members' performances on this segment.
  • 3- Find one performance on the date of the event. 📆
  • 4- Access to the corresponding strava activity. 🎉

💡 Tips:

  • The strava-segment-explorer is a nice map that can be find at strava.com -> discover -> discover segments.
  • strava segments can be searched by name or keyword, e.g. the name of the event, using the strava-segment-search
  • strava segments can also be searched using the excellent SegmentExplorer by doogal.co.uk/.
transterritoire_segment.gif
Finding a strava segment located on the route, from a low-resolution image of this course: roughly align the two maps (here a main road crosses a smaller road), identify a particular shape on the route (here a nice straight line crossing a big road, followed by a climb), then zoom in on the segment explorer and align the two maps using their elements (e.g. village names, lakes and roads), and look for segments that could be on the actual route. Open the segment page. Go to the leaderboard. Check if some performances have the date of the event. If so, open the corresponding activity by clicking on the date (not the username).

Two issues may occur when trying to find segments on the route:

  • The segment is not laying on the route.
    • Solution: try other segments.
  • The segment is on the route, but no performance is listed in the top-10 leaderboard, with the date of the event.
    • Solution-0: with strava premium, one can see all performances in the leaderboard, not just the top-10.
    • Solution-1: with strava premium, filters can be applied, for instance a "date" filter.
    • Solution-2: usually, the "women: all-time" classification is less busy than the "men: all-time", therefore it is more likely to contain activities the date of the event.

🎁 Bonus: how to export a .gpx from a strava activity?

  • Option-1: use strava premium.
  • Option-2: there are some good tools around - look in google-search: example1, example2.

2 🖌️ Draft

It is time to connect the waypoints you have identified and/or adjust the route you have found.

The goals of this section are to:

  • ✍️ Draft a route using your result(s) of the previous section.
  • ✅ Make sure the length and elevation of the drafted route are ok for you.
    • If not, adjust the drafted route.
Click to expand
komoot_drawing.gif
Drafting a route with komoot/plan is easy: define a start, a destination, and an activity type. That's it. Further waypoints could be added to the drafted route. Now you can check if the length and elevation of the route are ok for you. In this example, 40 km may be a bit too much for a one-day hike.

For more details on komoot/plan:

💡 Tips:

  • You may have got a .gpx file from the previous section: komoot let you easily import such file as a komoot/plan, and edit it.

3 🧐 Check and adjust

The goal of this section is to optimize the drafted route, making it as enjoyable as possible:

Below is a list of things to check.

I advise you to:

  • 👀 Check and adjust first on a coarse level: consider re-routing if necessary.
  • 🔬 Only then focus on small details. 🔍

After completing this section, your route will be ready!

🟠 ⚠️ Komoot routing tips

Click to expand

First of all, review the warnings generated by komoot.

"Be it a rough road, private land or a particularly steep stretch of trail, komoot’s tips deliver helpful information about your route’s characteristics, so you can better prepare yourself for your adventure." (source)

routing_tips.png
Learn more about the Routing tips in this page.

📈 Climbs

Click to expand

Check the elevation profile and, if necessary, consider re-routing parts of the tour.

climbs.gif
Visualize the elevation profile, identify steep climbs, consider alternatives using strava-global-heatmap, and confirm that the new tour characteristics (waytypes and surfaces) are suitable.

🏜️ Surface

Click to expand

Verify the way type and surface type and, if needed, re-route specific parts of the tour.

Way types describe the nature of the route (path, cycleway, street, highway, trail, singletrack or road) (source).

Surface types describe the actual condition: whether it’s sand, asphalt, cobblestones, or gravel (source).

asphalt.gif
Checking the surface for a road-cycling tour: clicking on the surfaces types (see bar on the left) that may be problematic for road bikes (Unpaved: 272 m, Compacted Gravel: 966 m, Cobblestones: 1.12 km) make the map jump to the corresponding sections. Then, using images showing the path (highlights [red points on the map 🔴] and komoot-trail-view [green dots on the map 🟢]), one can decide if it is ok to ride with a road-bike. Alternatives can be considered at the same time: in this example, the Compacted Gravel section is not ideal, but it is short and calm while the alternative (orange road) would add some steep climbs. The cobblestones section is also accepted, based on pictures, and will let the rider visit the old city.

💡 Tips:

  • ⚖️ Consider trade-offs: road-cycling tours prefer asphalt and paved surfaces, but small roads with less traffic can also be appealing.
    • On the one hand, state roads may offer ideal surfaces, but can be busy and potentially dangerous. However, safe cycleways may present on its side.
    • On the other hand, a small street with compact gravel surface may not be ideal for road-bike tires, but it can offer a scenic ride.
  • 🖱️ To inspect each segment of the route with a given surface type, repeat clicking on the given surface type: each click makes the map jump to the respective segment.
  • 📈 As demonstrated in the animation above, display the Waytypes & Surfaces together with the elevation profile (bottom of the map) for an overview along the route.

📊 Trail level / difficulty

Click to expand

Evaluate the technical difficulty of trails possibly present in your route.

Komoot sometimes provides a "difficulty level" for hiking and MTB paths using different scales:

difficulty.gif
Checking the technical difficulty of the route with the SAC Hiking scale, komoot warnings and pictures.

The komoot-trail-view is a feature to see pictures of the actual site, taken by other users.

trail_view.gif
Checking the technical difficulty of a mountain-bike downhill: the MTB single track scale is displayed (S2) - but this information seems to be restricted to komoot premium users. komoot provides additional helpful information: the way-type (singletrack), its surface (natural) and its slope (up to ~20%). The komoot-trail-view (green dot 🟢) is really valuable in this downhill.

💡 Tip:

  • The levels (S0, S1 ... for MTB and T0, T1 ... for run/hike) may only be available with a komoot premium subscription.
    • However, other websites can reference the difficulties of popular trails.
    • For instance the website trailforks, despite using a different scale system.
  • The difficulty level, as well as the waytypes & surfaces can help decide the direction of the route (clockwise or counterclockwise). 🔄
    • I personally prefer to hike up on technical trails, and walking down on easier and broader paths.
    • But this is the opposite for mountain-bike.

🧡 Usage frequency

Click to expand

Undecided between two path options?

  • The strava-global-heatmap is a VERY convenient tool to check which option is more frequently used, and therefore potentially more reliable.

However, it may be difficult for the eyes to match corresponding locations on the two maps:

  • 1- The komoot map used to draw your route.
  • 2- The strava-global-heatmap.

My suggestion is to:

  • 1- Open the two maps in two neighbouring tabs in your internet browser.
  • 2- Zoom the komoot map on a portion to be inspected.
  • 3- "Align" the strava-global-heatmap with the komoot map:
    • Iteratively adjust the zoom and the position of the strava-global-heatmap, until both maps show same elements on same places of your screen when switching between the two tabs.
  • 4- Switch between the two tabs (ctrl+tab and ctrl+shift+tab) to get an overlaid view and therefore be able to understand which options are the more frequented.

It would be very convenient to automate this manual alignment method, as listed in the still missing section.

miotte.gif
On the komoot planning map, multiple variants are possible. After aligning the strava-global-heatmap with the komoot-map, as described above, one can see that the south-option is not frequented at all.
morlaix.gif
komoot suggests to exit the "yellow road", take a small lane, and eventually come back to the "yellow road". While changing lanes might be tedious (especially in downhill), komoot probably considers it beneficial as "yellow roads" may be full of fast cars. But avoiding the yellow road may not be the best strategy here. Firstly, in this example, the alternative lane is narrow and steeper. Secondly, the strava-global-heatmap shows that the yellow road is much more frequented. Thirdly, the google street view confirms that the yellow lane is not that bad to ride. In order to force komoot to keep the yellow road, two waypoints on it must be added.

🚙 Traffic

Click to expand

It may not be enjoyable to walk or ride on a highly frequented road, especially for road cycling.

While komoot already indicates the type of road (cycleway, street, state road ...), it is worth verifying the actual traffic.

traffic_bridge.gif
This bridge should be easy to cross, shouldn't it? It is marked as cycleway by komoot. In addition, it seems fairly frequented by cyclists based on the strava-global-heatmap. But the limited popularity (19/26), the comments and the street-view give hints that this bridge might not be so easy to ride. In reality cycling on this bridge is really impressive to ride, due to strong wind and fast vehicles driving very close to the cycling lane. Unfortunately there is no easy alternative in this case.
traffic.gif
The traffic layer of google maps can show the "typical traffic". This example considers the traffic on the climb to San Marino during the weekend: it seems preferable to ride very early, since roads usually get busy during the day.

🚦 Traffic Lights

Click to expand

Cycling in a city can become a nightmare if encountering plenty of traffic lights:

  • Brake hard
  • Change gears - if possible
  • Unclip
  • Wait
  • Clip - or try to! 😜
  • Accelerate
  • ... and repeat!

Roads with fewer traffic lights can be preferable, even if they are longer.

traffic_lights.gif
This example shows a simultaneous use of google street view (upper part) and google maps (bottom part) to verify the presence of traffic lights in a street.

⚠️ Issue:

  • Not all traffic lights are referenced in google maps.

This method to select roads with few traffic lights needs to be improved: see the still missing section.

🪡 Smoothness

Click to expand

Remove any irregularity in the route that may perturb the navigation.

smoothing.png
This discontinuity does not affect the route much but could disturb your navigation system that will provide unnecessary instructions like "take left at the next crossing, continue 5 m, turn back, turn left".
smoothing.gif
In this example, the user decides to edit the route and move waypoints WP3 and WP4. The resulting route looks smooth at first sight. But zooming-in shows that WP3 and WP4 are wrongly positioned at some intersections.

💡 Tips:

  • When you are satisfied with your plan, zoom in and check the position of each waypoint.
  • Avoid placing a waypoint directly on an intersection.
    • Try to position the waypoint on the desired path, just before or after the intersection.
  • Remove unnecessary waypoints.

✅ Authorisation / danger

When downloading a piece of software or opening an attached file in an email, do you not make sure these are legal and safe?

It needs to be checked that the route you have just created is safe, feasible and legal.

⛑️ Safety
Click to expand

"Anyone can record the route with their mobile phone and download it. The authors don't explicitly mention if it's safe, but they present it with a big smile and encourage people to go."

This article by Sustainable Tourism in Tenerife, continues with:

"Sometimes they do it just for the photo, because these trails and their views always look great on social media and offer breathtaking panoramic views. Other times they do it for pure daring, since small, little-used paths and complicated passages can be very attractive if you are seeking an adrenaline rush. The truth is that these [dangerous] routes have become fashionable among the most adventurous and often people do not really understand the danger to which they are are exposing themselves to."

guimar.gif
Example of the Ventanas de Güímar (Guimar windows): it looks wonderful, doesn't it?! The trustworthy Rother guide even references it as "TOP". Tons of .gpx files about this tour can easily be found. In the mean time, a blog mentions some serious risks, and another one even warns: "this is not an official trail and is not maintained". Conclusion: inform yourself using different sources and weight risks according to your condition.

💡 Tips:

  • Check the date: when was the tour posted?
  • Look at the comments and the description.
  • Look for a website of the region where you plan to go, in order to find an up-to-date list of opened and closed paths.
onf.gif
Checking the list of opened and closed paths on an official website. Making sure the information is up-to-date.

What about tours that do not involve off-road routes? The data on reported accidents involving cyclists could be utilized to tailor road cycling routes.

  • Several websites present statistics on road traffic accidents based on local police reports.
  • For instance unfallatlas.statistikportal.de in Germany.
  • Perhaps, considering the ratio of accidents/traffic may be more pertinent than focusing solely on the absolute number of accidents.
accidents.gif
Examining the map of reported accidents with personal injury and applying the "Accidents involving bicycles" filter.
❌ ✔️ Feasibility
Click to expand
volcano.gif
Example of the piton de la fournaise: on outdoor-active, the official local tourist office (it should be reliable, right?) promotes a mountain-bike tour marked as TOP. The .gpx is easily exported and imported to komoot. A first warning comes: "the route includes segments that are highly dangerous (for 6.31 km out of 11.9 km)". In addition, the trail view offered by google street view ends to make it clear: this route would for many mountain-bikers infeasible.

💡 Tips:

  • Be aware that the strava global heatmap may contain wrongly-labelled activities. In the above example, the strava global heatmap shows some activity when applying the "only-by-bike" filter (:bike:), whereas as shown above the route is not suitable for most cyclists.
    • Strava users may have come by bike and recorded the hike while still in cycling mode.
    • In case of doubt, checking the google street view on the considered path in komoot really helps.
🚳 Legal
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While a spot may be technically safe and easy enough to access (in addition of being beautiful), it can still be forbidden. This especially applies to cycling.

teide_eggs.gif
Example of the Huevos del Teide: these trails look amazing for mountain-biking, don't they?! I find in google image a nice MTB pic of this place featuring a mountain-bike. A .gpx file can be quickly and easily found. But then warnings start to accumulate: when importing the .gpx file to komoot, komoot marks most of the route as "not permitted for cycling". The strava global heatmap shows almost no activity in this zone (except the climb to montana blanca). While many MTB trails are referenced by trailforks on the island, there are none inside Teide National Park. Finally, the official text of local government states the prohibition. Back to the nice MTB pic: "If this image motivates you to take your MTB and ride on the trail, you should know that you do so at your own risk". 🤨

Conclusion of the above example: do ignore the warnings and use diverse information sources in order to ensure you are not planning to ride on routes forbidden by the local government.

⛔ Road blockage

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Verify that your route does not contain any (temporary) closed road or path.

🚧 Permanent blockage
barrier.gif
Example: imagine you are looking for a nice spot to make a break along your route. What about this small lake? Trying to add a detour to it using komoot only results in an incomplete part. A lock symbol can be seen: "Potentially locked barriers". This is confirmed by the pictures as well as by the strava global heatmap: the lake and its beach seem unreachable.
🚫 Temporary blockage

Streets may be blocked for a day (because of a race, a market, a demonstration, a street festival, etc.) or for longer (because of a construction site, for example).

  • Such info is not easy to find!
  • Looking for all the events happening in a given region at a certain date may give hints, but could be very tedious and still incomplete.
closed_routes.gif
The traffic layer of google maps can show currently blocked streets.

Paths may be closed for repairs or as a precaution after bad weather, as shown in the example of the saftey section.

closed_routes.gif
The map of the excellent Swiss geographical information platform reference the closed trails in Switzerland 🇨🇭.

The examples above only list current blockages that have already started.

  • It would be nice to know in advance which blockages are planned for a certain date. See the still missing section.

🌦️ Weather

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The weather conditions along your planned route can be inspected using different tools:

  • komoot/premium/weather:

    • "Worried you’re heading into bad weather? Find out ahead of time and pack precisely the kit you’ll need — thanks to dynamic weather forecasts that cover every inch of your adventure."

  • Epic Ride Weather:

    • "Epic Ride Weather connects to your routes and rides in Strava, Ride With GPS, Komoot and other services. You pick the route and start time, and Epic Ride Weather forecasts the weather for the duration of your ride based on your pace."

  • And many more.
weather.gif
Ad for the dynamic weather forecasts by komoot (source). Weather information such as temperature, precipitation, wind speed and direction and UV index can be displayed for every single part of your route, as well as waytypes & surfaces and elevation profile information. Forcast can be made up to 48h in advance. This komoot feature is restricted to premium users but, as written above, many free alternatives exist.

Standard weather forecasts are valuable, but imperfect for outdoor activities since they usually do not express an apparent temperature, which would be more appropriate: 🌡️

  • "The apparent temperature, also known as "feels like", is the temperature equivalent perceived by humans, caused by the combined effects of air temperature, relative humidity and wind speed." (wikipedia).

💡 Tips:

  • Try to estimate which parts of your route will be:
    • 1- Exposed to the wind. 🌬️
    • 2- Shaded. 🌓
    • For example dense trees in a forest can protect you from the wind, while their leaves can shield you from the sun radiations.
  • Multiple methods can be used:
    • Satellite views (e.g. with komoot, strava, google maps) give quick and reliable information about the presence of forest. 🌲
    • The vegetation and its density can also be estimated using a map legend and/or the shades of green on the map. 🌳
      • For instance dense forest, open forest, mountain pasture, meadow, rock, glacier are possible vegetation types in the map legend.
    • The surrounding terrain should also be taken into account:
      • For instance a mighty mountain in the west can obscure the setting sun and therefore cause an earlier sunset for you. 🌄
  • Once you have estimated the shadow and wind protection along the route, you could decide the direction of your route (clockwise or counterclockwise). 🔄
    • Personally, I prefer to climb hills in cool conditions and descend them in warmer conditions.
vegetation.gif
Inspecting the vegetation along this route which, according to the elevation profile, consists of a long climb followed by a flat portion on a ridge. The OpenStreetMap layer shows forest as "vegetation type" for the climb (:evergreen_tree:) while the ridge looks to be more like a meadow (light gray). The komoot-trail-view, the satellite view, and the google street view confirm these vegetation types. This means the ridge should be more exposed to sun and wind than the climb.
adret_ubac.png
Bonus: Do you know the terms "adret" and "ubac" used in the French Alps? An "adret" slope is the land on the side of a valley that receives the most sunlight. Conversely, an "ubac" slope refers to the opposite side (cool and dark). (source of image)

🗺️ Other maps

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You can utilize further different maps to refine your planned tour, for example:

miotte3.gif
The maps of komoot and IGN differ: some paths exist on one map and not on the other. The strava-global-heatmap shows that the komoot map seems to be more up-to-date.

💫 Conclusion

Your route is now prepared! 🏆

Before you go for your adventure, here a couple of final words and thoughts.

👣 Final steps

Click to expand

🧭 1- To navigate the route:

  • Either navigate the route using the komoot app.
  • Or download the .gpx file from komoot and use it on another navigation device.

💡 Tips:

  • Non-premium users of komoot can download the .gpx file of the route using the Komoot to GPX app.
    • Make sure to (temporary) make the route "public", otherwise the app will not manage to find and download it.

🩹 2- Your adventure, although carefully planned, could be disrupted by various factors:

  • Personal reasons:
    • Injury 🤕
    • Mechanical problem 💥
  • External reasons:
    • Delayed / cancelled transport, e.g. train/bus ⏳
    • Blocked route 🚧
    • Changing weather 🌪️

Preparing an alternative route may be useful!

💥 Still missing

Here's a list of features I'm missing and that would be very useful for planning routes.

  • Should you know already existing solutions or should you have ideas, please let me know (see the your suggestions section)! 🙏
Click to expand

  • 🗺️ #1 How to overlay maps.

    • Some examples in previous sections (e.g. usage frequency) were using both strava-global-heatmap and komoot-map in parallel.
    • It would be very convenient to have these two maps merged into one single map.
    • As explained in the usage frequency section, an alternative to merging two aligned maps into one single map is to align the two maps opened in two neighbouring tabs of the internet browser, and to quickly switch from one to another.
      • The alignment of the two maps can be done manually, but it would be great to automate it. 🤖
      • This should not be too hard:
        • Most maps are displayed based on latitude, longitude and zoom parameters. You can see below that these three parameters are present in the two URLs of strava and komoot, for example:
          • https://www.strava.com/heatmap#11.42/-4.46321/48.33819/bluered/ride (format: zoom/longitude/latitude)
          • https://www.komoot.com/plan/@48.3332830,-4.4579533,10.304z?sport=racebike (format: latitude,longitude,zoom)
        • Equalizing these three parameters for the two websites of strava and komoot should align their maps.

  • 🚦 #2 Traffic-lights counter.

    • Current issue: road-cycling in a city can become a nightmare if encountering plenty of traffic lights.
    • It would be great to determined, given a planned cycling route, the number of traffic lights contained in the route.
    • Idea-1: as a first estimate, this could be determined based on the number of crossroads along the route.
    • Idea-2: another approach could be to utilize Google Maps, which already provides information about traffic lights and stop signs along your route.

  • 🚘 #3 Heatmap of cars.

    • While it's not always possible to road-cycle exclusively on cycleways (e.g. some of them have a gravel surface), sharing the road with a high volume of vehicles is not ideal.
    • It would be useful to find roads with the less possible automotive traffic. 😉
    • Idea: the traffic layer of google maps can be used to estimate the usual traffic, as demonstrated in the traffic lights section.

  • 🚧 #4 Map of temporary closed streets.

    • Most maps focus on describing the space. There is no time dimension. But indeed maps can change over time: For instance, a race event or a construction site could block certain streets.
    • Visualizing such modifications on the map, based on the date of the planned activity, would be beneficial.
    • Idea-1: local authorities should be aware of coming events (organizers have declared). Maybe they could communicate this to komoot or strava.
    • Idea-2: google maps already references some roads that are currently closed, as shown in the road blockage section.
asphalt.jpg
Asphalt 😋

  • 🛣️ #5 Map with asphalt quality.

    • What a pleasure it is to road cycle on smooth asphalt, without any irregularities! 🤗
    • In contrast, it can be uncomfortable, energy-consuming, and attention-demanding to deal with a road full of cracks. 😵‍💫
    • Idea: activity trackers, e.g. garmin, could record and analyse the vibrations during a road-cycling activity, in order to accordingly evaluate the smoothness of each road.

  • 🤹 #6 Embed multiple options inside one single .gpx, in order for the user to decide during the activity which alternative to follow.

    • komoot offers some features for mid-Tour route adjustments, but the alternative plan is not prepared in advance.
    • Idea: one possible solution is to incorporate all the alternatives into a single route, this may affect the route summary (elevation, distance) though.

  • 🍝 #7 Miscellaneous.

    • 🚵 Mountain-bike filter for strava-global-heatmap.
      • [2024.05] Now available 🥳. Together with other filters such as Gravel Ride and E-Mountain Bike Ride.
      • For some regions, these filters provide an empty heatmap despite a high volume of traffic: most strava users probably do not specify the activity type and the default setting (Ride) is applied.
      • It would be nice to be able to apply multiple filters. For instance Gravel Ride AND Mountain Bike Ride.
    • 🌗 A map showing shaded areas based on a date and time.
    • 🅿️ A reliable map of car parks (near your tour starting point).
    • 🐷 One way of answering the question: "Is this trail usually muddy?"
      • Together with trail reviews, some information can help to give a rough estimate: exposure to the sun (shaded or exposed area), presence of springs or small streams and type of trail surface.
    • 🌧️ The amount of precipitation that has fallen in a region in the last few days (e.g. in the last 72 hours).
      • Either as a map or as a number.
      • To be able to estimate how muddy paths can be.
    • 🚰 A map showing free drinking water sources.
      • Some are already marked in komoot as "highlight".

💡 Your suggestions

Please share yours ideas, especially regarding the still missing section:

Thank you in advance for your contributions. 🙏

👋 Final words

A couple of final suggestions from my side:

  • 🤩 Do not check every detail in advance; leave room for surprise and wonder.
  • 🐑 strava-global-heatmap is a fantastic tool, but do not become a mouton de Panurge, i.e. one sheep who follows a group without thinking for himself.
  • ⛑️ Safety first. Agree to turn back and abandon your plan if the situation becomes too dangerous.
  • 🥳 A plan must stay a plan: feel free to improvise while on the terrain.

I hope you enjoyed reading this page, and could learn something.

Happy planning, but above all happy outdoor activity! 😃

Simon

About

A general recipe to efficiently create routes for outdoor activities (🥾, 👟, 🚲, 🏃, 🚴, 🚵)

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