Guides
How to plan a cycling route you'll actually enjoy
Planning a cycling route takes five minutes: open the free routess planner, drop waypoints, and export a GPX. Planning a route you will actually enjoy takes a bit more thought: the right shape, the right surfaces, honest elevation, and quiet roads. This guide covers both.
Start with the shape of the ride
Decide loop or A to B before touching the map. Loops start and end at your door and never leave you stranded; A to B rides pair well with a train ride home. Then pick a target distance and, for longer rides, check the wind: riding out into a headwind and coming home with a tailwind beats the reverse every single time.
Drop waypoints, let the road network do the work
In the planner, every click adds a waypoint and the path snaps along the road network between them. Fewer waypoints is better: place them at the places you genuinely care about (that one gravel section, the café at the turnaround) and let the routing fill in the rest. For cycling, the planner can avoid highways and ferries. And where you know better than the map, switch a segment to a straight line and the route obeys you instead of the network.
Check what you'll ride on
The difference between a great ride and a miserable one is usually the surface. routess breaks every route into surface segments: paved, compacted, unpaved, and path. On a road bike, scan for unpaved surprises before they find you; on gravel, hunt for them on purpose. Not sure whether that grey line is asphalt or dirt? Flip to the satellite map style and look.
Be honest about elevation
The elevation profile shows total climbing and where it lands. A rough rule of thumb: 10 metres of gain per kilometre is rolling, 20 or more means real climbing. The number matters less than the placement: 600 metres spread across a ride feels fine, 600 metres stacked in the last 20 kilometres is a decision you make on purpose or regret thoroughly.
Get it out the door
Export the route as GPX for your head unit or watch (the GPX guide covers Garmin and Wahoo), or open routess on your phone: it installs as a web app straight from the browser, so the route you planned on Sunday evening is in your pocket on Monday morning. Save it to your library and it stays editable for next time.