homeJourney planning (online wayfinders)
 Plot your routeUsing Google Maps this is pretty darned fantastic route measuring resource, that can also guess at your calorie use for any plotted ride. Press 'start recording' and double-click on your start point and then add in way-points along the way. Do this accurately at every junction and you'll get an A to B distance in miles or kilometres. Choose 'hybrid' view and get to see your route from the air, with road names superimposed on top. It's a hack designed by a runner so routes of 20 miles and above become a pain to log in, but if you've got the spare time, this site rocks. |
| 2600km of forest routes Find your route in the forest. This page will allow you to search by name of the forest, nearest town, by country or county or by grade of route. The Forestry Commission now has a new marketing programme for getting more people into the great outdoors: Active Woods, and cycling plays an important part in forest recreation. |
| London: click for cycle routes Plan your route in London with the help of Transport for London's journey planner. Tick the bike option and deselect all other modes. |
| London Cycle Network route finder Click 'enter' and accept the applet to open this bicycle route wayplanner. Naturally, it's for London only. The maps created are printable. The site can be slow and there are free, printed maps of the same info but for when you can't get your hands on one of the maps... |
| Via Michelin by bike The Via Michelin route planner has a bike option, and it's not half bad. It's limited to just over 100 miles so no chance of planning Lands End to John o'Groats but for short hops in unfamiliar terrain it's just the job |
| London journey planner This is a fantastic resource for those wishing to get route directions in London. The entry screen shows bus and train options only. Click the green 'more options' button for the cycling and walking tick boxes. Choose whether you want to use public transport as well as your bike or whether you don't want to cycle for more than an hour. Type in two postcodes or drill down to your start and end points using the (slow); maps and a personalised route is produced. |
| GPS Routes UK There are 150+ GPS bike routes on this useful website, created initially for Lancashire but now with routes all over England. Each route contains GPS files, elevation profiles and maps with a photographic aerial view of the route.It's also possible to upload your own GPX files, ie GPS routes. |
| Transport Direct (but no bikes yet) This online journey planner can be user-modified to show an amazing density of information, such as all bus-stops or primary schools in a selected area. There's no integration with bicycle routes yet but for other forms of door-to-door transport it's an excellent resource. And is has live travel news, too. |
| Dig-map your ride Comprehensive article on online routefinders and journey planners. |
| Bike the dykes This selection of 'Fietsrouteplanners' help you work out a bike-friendly route in the Netherlands from A to B with the aid of pull-down menus. Yes, it's in Dutch but it's still easy to master. |
| Traveline Bikes aren't listed but there's cycle information on the websites of the operators linked on the Traveline site. |
| Cyclestreets Cyclestreets is a UK-wide cycle journey planner system, which lets you plan routes from A to B by bike. It is designed by cyclists, for cyclists, and caters for the needs of less both confident and less confident cyclists. It's based on data provided in an 'opensource' form from OpenCycleMap via OpenStreetMap. |
| Placing customised Google maps on a website Step-by-step instructions to help riders create embeddable route maps for websites and blogs. |
| Bristol Streets This is a map-based site chocka with transport information, including bike lanes, off road routes, bus routes (with live bus info), train times, and car club locations. |
