If you love cycling, then you know how important it is to have a great route. Tom Gasper from Traili Map finds it so important that he built a whole website around finding better bike trails. In today’s guest post he is going to show us how to find the perfect bike route.
When I started bike touring, I never thought much about picking a good route. I’d just pick a place that I could reach easily by train and that would allow me to take my bike along. Then I’d pick another point, a town or city that I’d always wanted to see, as my destination.
After getting off the train, I’d usually grab a coffee, load up on an unhealthy amount of snacks, enter the final destination into whatever navigation app I was using at the time, and start cycling.
8 things I learned on the worst bike trip ever
The Problem with Using Navigation Apps for Cycling
Navigation apps like Google Maps or mapy.cz would usually send me on the fastest route from point A to point B. That often meant riding on secondary or even primary roads, with cars passing me three or four times faster than I was moving. Usually, those rides weren’t the most pleasant, but they got the job done – I got from A to B. What else could I ask for, right?
But every now and then, the app would really surprise me. Once, while cycling from Croatia to Poland, I got routed onto a very pleasant, quiet route that after checking later on turned to be a section of the EuroVelo 9 trail. Another time, it sent me down a section of the Moravian Trail in Czechia. It was a completely different experience: no cars, nature all around me, and occasional fellow cyclists waving every time I passed them. Truly cycling heaven.
cycle the EuroVelo 9 through Slovenia
More Bike Trails, Please
I started trying out some of the more cycling-focused route planning tools like Komoot and Strava. They were definitely better than general-purpose navigation apps.
Komoot is great for surface filtering, highlights, and route types. Strava helps you follow where other cyclists go, especially in urban areas. And then there’s OpenCycleMap – an OpenStreetMap-based visual layer that lets you see all the major bike trails in your region.
All of those tools helped a lot, but I still found myself often tweaking the routes or wishing for a more intuitive and bike-touring-focused approach.
So… I built my own route planner: Traili Map. The main idea for this app was that it would heavily prioritize bike trails and safe/quiet roads over the most direct routes.
What Makes a Great Bike Route?
Let’s backtrack a little and think about what makes a bike route fun to ride. I would say it’s a mix of several things:
- Safety: Dedicated bike paths or low-traffic roads are a must
- Scenery: Lakes, forests, mountains, or even interesting urban areas
- Surface Type: Gravel, pavement, dirt? You need to pick the right surface for your bike – otherwise, I promise you won’t enjoy your trip
- Elevation Gain: Challenging climbs can be fun or exhausting, depending on your fitness
- Amenities: Cafes, rest areas—these are often overlooked but can be game-changers
Komoot, Traili Map, and OpenCycleMap all offer ways to account for some of these factors. For example, in Traili Map and Komoot, you can easily check the surface type and elevation profile of the route.
Discovering Routes: Start Broad
When I’m not sure where I want to ride, I start broad. I might choose a general area I want to explore (say, a national park or an interesting town I’ve never visited). Then, I make sure there’s a train station or bus station nearby that allows me to get there with my bike (for example Flixbus usually allows you to take a bike with you). Then, using Traili, I just select the town/city of my arrival and the endpoint.
That’s usually enough to give me a pretty decent route. If the route isn’t a loop, then I also make sure there’s a train that will take me back to my destination.
how to take your bike on the train in Germany
Then Refine
After I have the initial route generated, I like to check which bike trails the route is using.
I usually click through the bike routes and see if there’s one that looks particularly interesting. If I stumble upon a bike trail like this, I usually change the initial route to more closely follow that trail.
I also like to check at least a couple of random points on the route using Google Maps Street View to get an overall picture of the area where I’m going. I always double-check that the surface on the route is right for my bike.
Saving a Route to a Collection
When I’m done creating the route, I click “Save route” and add it to one of my collections.
You can think of collections as folders for your routes, categorized however you like:
- Planning a bikepacking trip with multiple stages? Create a collection.
- Want to save all your favorite local loops? Make a collection.
- Curating dream routes for a future holiday? A collection can come in handy as well.
Both Komoot and Traili Map have this feature. Though from what I know, you have to have a premium version to use it on Komoot, while Traili is fully free.
I usually also add some description since I often share the collections with other people. Sometimes I like to create a couple of versions of the route and put them in the collection if I’m going with other people and want to propose some alternatives.
Find the Perfect Bike Route: Is It Worth It?
Looking back at all those rides where I got stuck on busy roads with trucks whizzing past, I wish I’d known about these tools earlier. The difference between grinding along a highway and cruising through a quiet forest path is night and day.
Sure, you can spend hours perfecting every kilometer of your route, but even a quick 5-minute check can make your trip way more enjoyable. Sometimes the best discoveries happen when you trust the tools to guide you toward those hidden gems you never would have found otherwise.
Tom Gasper is a programmer and passionate cyclist. So far he has explored 11 countries by bike, including Lithuania, Germany, Slovenia, Croatia, and Spain. What he loves most about cycling is the sense of freedom and being close to nature. In his spare time, he develops Traili Map – a route planning application for cyclists.