Tool recommendations for planning Gravel Bike Rides in England and Wales that don’t suck
My day job is as a Software Engineer. But, following recovery from a Cancer shaped “you need to get fit” message in 2002, I’ve been a serious non-competitive cross country runner, and since 2015, road and off-road cyclist in the English countryside.
This article is about what I consider to be currently the best tools for planning Gravel bike routes in England and Wales¹. It’s the first part of a series that is based on my experience of how to go about planning Gravel Bike cycling routes in England and Wales that (usually anyway) don’t suck (even with the best-laid plans there are plenty of learning opportunities).
Why is planning Gravel Bike routes hard?
Gravel Biking is the moniker for the process of riding a bicycle on surfaces anywhere between and including at least some of those involved in Mountain Biking and Road Cycling. In the UK, as a technical description, it’s about as accurate a label as Mountain Biking² is for (most) proponents of that activity. However, it’s the label with the most traction, so we may as well stick with it for now³.
Anyway, Gravel biking is a challenge because of a combination of:
- The distances involved tending to be large enough that if either a mechanical is suffered, or the terrain is misjudged; it is not always easy to walk out of trouble or call for help.
- Massively variable terrain.
In turn, this leads to the planning tools needing to help with not messing things up by:
- Finding “interesting” routes (both in town and the country), that are (ideally) away from motorised traffic, and are not necessarily just the fastest path from A to B.
- Automating routing, when desired, because an entirely manual process quickly becomes error-prone and tedious.
- Providing multiple sources of up to date, accurate and highly detailed information to help assess the terrain (since that can, as you’ll see below, vary quite a lot).
When the route is got right, it can lead to sublime experiences, when it’s got wrong …
Information sources and tool recommendations
Anyone who has taken even the briefest of looks at what is available will have discovered that there is a myriad of information sources and apps to “help” with planning and creating cycling routes.
However, as of June 2018 for Gravel Biking in England my opinion is that there are:
- Zero mobile apps that I would recommend using for anything other than emergency, or field environment type situations.
- No single tool or service that consistently provides enough information and tooling to create routes reliably.
- The majority of what is available is either ill-suited to the task, moribund, unreliable or has a user interfaces that makes me want to punch the computer screen.
These are my recommendations to hopefully get things off to a start that doesn’t involve hardware damage.
Information — Ordnance Survey (OS) Explorer Leisure maps
In the UK, the most reliable and detailed mapping information is held by the national mapping agency, the Ordnance Survey.
For off-road cycling outside of urban areas, their Explorer 1:25,000, or at a push the Landranger 1:50,000 range⁴ are the best maps. They have a design that has been specially optimised for countryside leisure activities such as walking, horse riding and cycling.
Even in remote areas they consistently contain accurate information about landscape features such as rights of way, field boundaries, ditches, hedges, copses, farm tracks etc. All of which are useful when planning (and subsequently following) routes.
Because of their design and scale, in high-density urban areas OpenStreetMap, Google Maps, Local authority cycling maps are better for planning.
Paid and free access is available to the maps from many sources, e.g. ViewRanger has paid, and Microsoft’s Bing service has free online only access. However, offline access is vital⁵, so I recommend the Ordnance Survey’s own subscription service as the as the lowest cost⁶ way to get that as well.
Why
- Plenty of detail and consistently highly accurate.
- Safest default starting point for planning any Gravel Bike ride in England and Wales.
- Lowest cost smartphone offline access.
Information — OpenStreetMap (OSM) maps
These are maps derived from the work of the OpenStreetMap project⁷.
Like all OpenSource projects, it is reliant on the quantity and quality of their volunteers. In the urban areas, the number of contributors tends to be sufficiently high. Correspondingly these maps usually have:
- More detailed and substantially accurate information about available riding surfaces and cycling infrastructure than either Ordnance Survey, Google, Microsoft or Apple’s mapping offerings.
- A design that I think works better when planning urban cycle routes than those I have seen from the Ordnance Survey.
While in the countryside there tend to be fewer contributors, so the level of accuracy and detail is usually not so good. In turn, this gives rise to particular problems such as:
- Incorrect rights of way being assigned to tracks.
- Missing tracks.
- Absent landscape features, such as field boundaries, ditches, hedges etc.
They are of course available for free, and it is entirely possible to rectify any mistakes discovered yourself.
Why
- Best for planning in urban areas.
- Widely available and indispensable map layer for any countryside routing tool such as RideWithGPS, Strava etc.
- Some additional information about riding surfaces not available in the OS Explorer maps.
- Free.
Local authority cycling maps
These are cycling maps that local authorities in England and Wales maintain to encourage cycling.
They usually show on very large scale street maps where the Local Authority believes its cycling infrastructure, schemes and friendlier roads are
They are available for free and but sometimes they can be a bit hard to locate directly on the authority’s websites. Generally, I find the easiest way is to do a web search for “_Town/city/area name_are_interested_in_ cycling map”.
For example for Bedford, it leads to the link https://www.bedford.gov.uk/transport_and_streets/walking_and_cycling/cycle_lanes_and_routes.aspx. Which leads onto various links, one of which is the cycle map for Bedford.
Why
- Very large scale street map of local authority recommended cycling locations.
- Occasionally contains additional paths missing from OS Explorer, or OpenStreetMap maps.
- Useful for planning the traversal of urban environments.
Information — Strava
While not essential, I think it is worth having a free account with Strava.
Even if not using the activity logging, Strava has a massive user base, and in most areas, others will have enjoyed similar types of riding to what is being planned. They like to encourage cycling, so they make this information available in a couple of ways that can be useful during the planning.
Why — User following
At its simplest, it is possible to find Strava users who do the type of riding that we’re interested in. Either directly via link sharing, social media etc., for example, this is me. Or, somewhat indirectly by using the “Athlete Search” tool, e.g. try searching for “bedford, uk” and filter from there.
Once found, then it’s a simple matter to look at their logged rides for inspiration.
Why — Segment Explorer
Strava also has the Segment Explorer tool. This enables interactively browsing a map for public segments that its user base has created.
Aside from the locations, these segments also have information that can give some indication of the number of people riding it, when they’re doing it (winter/summer) and how fast.
The tool can be used during planning to either look for ideas, e.g. string segments together to create a ride. Or, to form a more precise opinion about how hard a route might be, e.g. no segment on a track, would imply to me that it isn’t used much and may well be overgrown, muddy or similarly hard going.
Information — Google Satellite view (or similar)
Google’s satellite view provides a high-resolution aerial view of an area.
In most places, the resolution is sufficiently high that an indication of both traffic density and of off-road riding surfaces can be obtained.
It also has a 3d view mode that can occasionally be useful for examining in-depth a particular part of the route where there might be worries about vegetation overgrowth. Essentially, if it’s going to be hard going, how long is it likely to be so.
NB: to see this most clearly it needs to be viewed at the highest available zoom with Google’s (road) labeling layer turned off ⁸.
Why
- Route assessment
- Vegetation
- Riding surface
- Traffic.
Information — Google Streetview
Google’s Streetview is a tool that gives the ability to view 360⁰ plus, zoomable, images taken from a camera mounted a couple of metres above the carriageway.
It’s useful when planning routes because it is reasonably up to date and covers almost all publicly accessible roads in the UK. It can provide:
- An indication of how well used off-road paths might be, i.e. if entry or exits to a track are overgrown, then it might also be little used in between and subsequently be hard going.
- An opportunity to virtually pre-ride road sections of the proposed route to:
- Form an impression in urban areas as to possible crime and safety levels, e.g. broken windows, burnt out cars, boarded up shops, loitering youths, might indicate an area where it is best to avoid, or at least not to hang around.
- Determine the presence and suitability of verges, Footways and other bailout options.
- Memorize landmarks, key turning points, shops, cafes, pubs etc.
- Obtain an idea of what traffic volumes are likely to be during the working day.
- Establish speed limits, road widths, driver sight lines, cycle unfriendly features and the general sanity, or otherwise, of attempting to ride on a given road.
By way of a couple of examples; consider first the Streetview of the entrance to the Bridleway continuation of Hail Lane track, off the A428, just to the east of St Neots, as shown below.
Firstly, the queue of cars ahead of the Google Streetview Car, the lack of verges or Footways, the (relatively) narrow road with bends and poor sight lines. All of which suggests a dangerous cycling experience that should be limited to crossing only (this correlates with my experience; it is a bloody awful road that can be almost impossible to get across during most daylight hours)
Secondly, if the movement arrows are used to move forward one step and then the image is zoomed in. It is fairly evident that the bridleway isn’t being used much and is quite overgrown (brambles ahoy), hinting that what is beyond is also likely to be hard work (which it was, and probably still is).
As a contrast to the somewhat lost cause of the A428, here’s the entrance from Easton Road onto Cornfield Hill track that we looked at earlier when discussing Google Satellite views
As can be seen, it nicely confirms the earlier analysis of a good riding surface and Easton Road looks nice and quiet as well.
Why
- Off-road track usage checking.
- Virtual pre-ride best tool for assessing safety. Particularly for Crime, Traffic, Road layouts, Speed limits and Footways, verges and other bail out options.
Tools — largest screen possible
Having a large display is incredibly useful not just for route contextualisation, but also for facilitating simultaneous working with multiple sources of information.
Essentially, the larger the screen, the easier it is to plan.
Smartphones, even plus sized ones, are pretty awful to use for planning anything other than a walk to the shops and should be regarded as emergency, or field, only options at present⁹. A tablet is just about acceptable, a laptop will be okay, and the biggest external monitor that can be obtained will make life much, much more pleasant.
Tool — Latest version of Chrome or Firefox
Most of the route planning apps make heavy use of a programming technology called Javascript. To work at their best, they need a modern web browser that has a highly optimised Javascript implementation.
For the web apps and services I recommend, Chrome is good, but on MacOS I find I get better performance scaling with Firefox¹⁰, i.e. the computer doesn’t grind to a halt with lots of windows open.
Tool — Starter, or Basic annual subscription to RideWithGPS route planning software
RideWithGPS is not perfect. But compared to the alternatives¹¹ its route planning app is comprehensive, faster and easier to use. In fact, it’s so much better, that I pay for a Basic annual subscription¹². However, to get started using their free Starter version will be fine for most people.
For our type of route planning, or if you are considering other options, I think its most important features are:
Essential:
- Switchable, routable, OpenStreetMap, Google Satellite and Map view base layers (it would be even sweeter if I could have OS maps in their as well¹³).
- Switchable auto-routing modes for Walking, on road Cycling and Driving that mostly works according to selected base layers.
- Manual routing/draw mode to work around inaccurate base maps and deficiencies in the routing algorithm when it doesn’t do what is required.
- Essential ride information, e.g. distance and amount of climbing involved for the planned route¹⁴.
- When in the field, its GPX file exports have enough points in them to be useful in determining what side of a hedge you should be on at trail junctions etc. (without continually having to refer to other maps)
- Fast, clean and reliable, doesn’t blow up and lose your routes after you’ve spent hours working on them.
Highly desirable
- Keyboard accelerator shortcuts for switching between many of the modes makes planning longer routes quicker.
- The ability to quickly delete, alter and combine sections of a route (not in Starter plan)
- GPX track import tracing (use any GPS recorded ride as the basis for creating a new route), (not in Starter plan).
- Offline maps and route following on their iOS and Android smartphone apps (not in Starter plan).
- The ability to view Google’s Streetview information directly within the application.
- Garmin/Strava ride syncing.
- Public and private route sharing.
- No adverts’ consuming CPU and screen estate.
- Good support and training documentation
- The tools are actually likely to apply to the whole of the United Kingdom. However, my more general experience is only within England and Wales, and public access rights do vary significantly in other parts of the UK.
- Calling it Slightly Hilly Biking, or Off-Road Bike Parking probably didn’t have quite the same marketing appeal :-)
- FWIW Bike hacking would be my fave, as in the activity is actually very similar to that of horse hacking .
- At a push, because the scale and necessary detail reductions can cause planning and subsequently following routes to be harder.
- There are still many, many places in the countryside where mobile data service is either slow or non-existent.
- As of 2018, monthly, or annual access costs are from £3.99 or £19.99 respectively.
- Operates a lot like a Wikipedia for maps, regular users can add, edit and fix things up as they see fit.
- Be very careful with labelling. It’s convenient, but for off-road riding the light grey road overlay can easily give the false impression of a better, i.e. tarmac or gravel, riding surface than actually exists.
- Perhaps someone will create an app that works well with a small screen and doesn’t suck elsewhere. About the closest I’ve found is ViewRanger’s. Its mobile app manages a small-screen route plotting experience that is tolerable, it has both OS and OpenStreetMap map base layers and it’s got a good desktop website. Looked promising in 2017; however, its OS maps access was very expensive and the GPX tracks were too coarse to be a reliable guide in the field as to the right side of hedges, ditches etc. without always having the battery sapping OS base maps visible.
- It’s also probably a good idea to make it slightly harder for Google to track every online move, after all, they no longer have the motto “Don’t be evil”
- In 2017 I investigated Ordnance Survey, ViewRanger, Strava, Plotaroute, GPSies, MapMyRide, mapOmeter, bikehike, JustGoRide amongst others.
- As of 2018 a Basic subscription is $50 a year, or $6 per month.
- Some of you might be wondering why I don’t just use the Ordnance Survey service. The main problem with the OS offering is that it does not do auto-routing outside of the UK’s national parks. So unless you live in one of them, or want to give yourself RSI when creating longer routes, it’s a non-starter.
- Because of the nature of the terrain, and the routing algorithm’s ignorance of it, time estimates are unlikely to be really worth worrying about.
