Route planning

'suck as bikely' more or less sums it up

some are better than others but the main problem with all the ones i've tried is that the number of uploaded routes far exceeds the number of downloaded routes, which means there's a high chaff-wheat ratio; quality control is not a strong point. if you want to find good routes then there's a whole bunch of 'my trip to work' type stuff to trawl through.

generally i prefer to just make one up if i'm somewhere i don't know. bikehike is really good for that. sometimes they're great, sometimes they're not. but i reckon that'd be the case if i got them off bikely or anywhere else

bikehike is at www.bikehike.co.uk btw. it's great because you can either do google routing or OS routing, so you can follow roads or head off-road or down cut throughs etc.

bikehike looks pretty good...esp that OS/Google combination. I might give it a go.

The site I settled on after trying out a few is Bikemap.net (http://www.bikemap.net/). It's not perfect but I prefer it to anything else I've found. I think it can be a case of just sticking with one til you're comfortable with it & used to the interface etc.

Online route planning: Cyclestreets.net

And, of course, for mobile use, the Bike Hub iPhone app:

http://bit.ly/buwDXO

And CycleStreets own iPhone app, just released (disclosure, I'm the developer) which like the BikeHub app uses CycleStreets routing, but has a somewhat different feature set, e.g. uploading photos to the CycleStreets Photomap.

http://www.cyclestreets.net/mobile/

And before anyone asks, an Android one is in the works

http://www.cyclestreets.net/blog/2010/08/25/busy-busy-busy/

how long before the android one comes out first, i wonder? Android phones are already outselling iPhones in the US, won't be long till the same is true here. And when Android goes PAYG, well...

Have a look at http://gb.mapometer.com/en/
It uses google maps and has some great features, although its not got OS maps like the bikehire site its great for planning your own routes

Thanks all. I'm more interested in making up routes and working out how far/elevation I've managed - rather than downloading other peoples.

I'll take a look at bikehike - thank you
(must spell check my posts as well )

bikeroutetoaster.com is the best I've used if you want to use the routes you create on a Garmin Edge etc. It creates a lot less odd issues than many of the others with GPX files. It always creates a GPX track file rather than a GPX route file that can cause too many point issues.

It also allows you to add course points and turn warnings to a tcx file automatically, which is a great feature when creating courses rather than routes.

Checked out bikehike.. great creation of routes but you can't save and share them (for some legal reason the site owner is worried about) a shame as it was quick and the OS mapping helped accuracy