So, I'm planning for a tour next year, about three weeks (~1500 km) in the Netherlands, Germany and a bit of Belgium. And right now I'm trying to figure the best way to use c.t for my planning and navigation. I've noticed that if I plan a multi-day trip in the web version of c.t, the black "overnight stay" markers don't make it to the Android app, so I'm led to believe that the recommended way is to let the web service split the route into separate days and then open them on the phone, on a day-by-day basis. Is this a correct interpretation of the designer's intentions?
And if I change my mind about where to go or when to sleep, will I be better off adjusting the "master route" and splitting it again?
What if, in some area where campgrounds (or wild camping spots) are plentiful and rarely far apart, I just follow the route outline without any pre-determined places to stay overnight, will the c.t phone app be able to recognize next day where I am and understand that I want to resume the tour from this location? Even if I've, say, made a multiday stopover with sightseeing at some nice place along the way?
Comments
I think the designer’s intentions on that one are best summed up as “things I haven’t had chance to do yet”. 😀 The overnight markers will definitely be coming to the Android app in a future release – they’re in the iPhone app already.
When you start riding, the app figures out where you are on your planned route, and starts the directions from there. So it shouldn’t have any difficulties in the scenario you’ve suggested.
Thanks! That's even better.
A follow-up question: In my RMVKMR_EXPERIMENTS folder, I have a route from Hoek van Holland to Aachen. It's pretty long (453 km) and when I try to save it with the option to split it at the overnight stops, it just fails with an uninformative error message. I've made it public in case somebody wants to use it to debug the system...
The error message just says:
Sorry, the route wasn't saved because an error occurred: error
Hm, that’s an unusual one. The short answer is that you can fix it by dragging via point 79 (which is an overnight) off the cycleway and onto the road that comes after. But entirely why that’s happening I’m not yet sure – I think it’s something to do with allowing U-turns (which overnight stops do) on one-way sections, but I haven’t been able to reproduce it elsewhere. I’ll keep looking…
Wow! That's an exotic bug if ever I heard of one. RESPECT for tracking it down so quickly. Quite a quirky corner case.
Torsten, I'm responding mainly because you mention possible wild camping in NL & Germany (and probably Belgium) where such a thing is illegal. Certainly, in NL there is an on the spot fine. Having said that, it is possible with caution and respect. Unfortunately, NL is very densely populated and it is next to impossible to find a place where you will not be seen.
There were places in NL available for hikers and bikers (known as pole camps you can search for "paal kamping" ) but I think most have been closed down due to bad behaviour. The good news is that there is no shortage of excellent camping grounds for the wandering cyclist in NL and campgrounds are well used to cyclists showing up with no reservation (the coast may be different). "Kamping bij de boer" is a collection of generally excellent, friendly and cheap campsites on farms.
As regards your main query, that's the kind of thing that can be "practised" in miniature by creating a short, say 20km route, with 4 "overnight stops" and seeing how the app handles it as you ride along, perhaps stopping and switching off the app to recreate the idea of a real overnight stop.
I used to live in NL and have wandered all over, into Germany and Belgium too - you'll have a great time and CT produces some excellent routes! Enjoy!
Hobbes, I'm aware that as a Swede I'm spoiled by our "all-man's right" that lets me wild camp on any land as long as I'm not trampling crops, spooking cattle or encroaching on someone's immediate privacy. I'm just exploring the hypothetical possibilities right now. This coming year's tour is already researched in geeky detail (gotta have some way to while away the boring winters up here in The North) but the prospect of maybe not having to make such detailed plans in advance is taunting me and CT has piqued my interest. Hopefully, I'll run CT as my main navigation tool next summer and just keep the Garmin Montana (where all routes have to be pre-loaded before I leave home) as a backup in case CT drains my battery too fast or I lose my phone, or something.
So rest assured, I will not be wild camping in the Benelux region, unless possibly if I find myself with some kind of mechanical issue in the woods of the Ardennes as it's starting to get dark...