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TECH NEWS

Cycle satnav app now finds cycling clubs as well as bike shops

Bike Hub's cycling satnav smartphone app finds quickest or quietest cycle routes and now locates nearest cycling clubs

The latest version of the Bike Hub cycling satnav app for iPhones and Androids locates the nearest British Cycling clubs as well as finding the quickest or quietest cycle routes in UK and Ireland. The new function that has been added to version 3.3 of the app is to support the Bicycle Association/Bike Hub sponsorship of Go-Ride, British Cycling's youth cycling programme.

The Bike Hub app was released in 2010 and has always been able to geo-locate your nearest bike shops and navigate you there.

We’ve recently reported on a cyclist routed on to the M3 motorway by a satnav app. This was probably because the cyclist was using a car-centric  app. Bike Hub is cycle-specific. The cycle routing is done via Cyclestreets of Cambridge. This A-to-B bicycle journey planning website uses mathematical graph theory algorithms to work out bike routes quickly. It uses OpenCycleMap, a cycle-specific map based on the community-generated OpenStreetMap.

The Bike Hub satnav uses roads and cycle paths, including Sustrans’ off-road bike routes. The app – provided free of charge by the bike industry – features turn-by-turn navigation, with voice instructions and vibrating alerts. Bike Hub recommends a user operates the app with a handlebar smartphone cradle. These are now widely available in bike shops and in gadget stores.

To download the app go to the Bike Hub website or iTunes.

Mat has been in cycling media since 1996, on titles including BikeRadar, Total Bike, Total Mountain Bike, What Mountain Bike and Mountain Biking UK, and he has been editor of 220 Triathlon and Cycling Plus. Mat has been road.cc technical editor for over a decade, testing bikes, fettling the latest kit, and trying out the most up-to-the-minute clothing. We send him off around the world to get all the news from launches and shows too. He has won his category in Ironman UK 70.3 and finished on the podium in both marathons he has run. Mat is a Cambridge graduate who did a post-grad in magazine journalism, and he is a winner of the Cycling Media Award for Specialist Online Writer. Now over 50, he's riding road and gravel bikes most days for fun and fitness rather than training for competitions.

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