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Difference between a GPX Route and a GPX Track?

28 Oct 2020
by Peter H
in forum cycle.travel
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I'm finding this website very helpful as I'm fairly new to this. I can't understand the difference between a GPX route and a GPX track when I download a cycle route that my group leader has devised. I initially tried a GPX ROUTE, as that was smaller and marked the turns, but that often seemed to take me in a straight line across fields, and confuse my Garmin which said I was off course a lot of the time. When I looked at the generated GPX files, I also noticed a 5 metre difference in the elevations between a ROUTE and a TRACK for identical latitude /  longitude co-ordinates. Perhaps someone could explain this? Thanks very much!

Comments

Thu 29 Oct 2020, 21:13

A GPX route is just a marker at each turn, so it doesn’t have the line plotted between turns.

A GPX track is a plotted line, but without turns marked.

You might want to choose a TCX course instead, which has both the turn markers and the plotted lines.

Alternatively, if you have a newish Garmin (one with Bluetooth) and the Garmin Connect app on your smartphone, the easiest thing to do is to set up a Garmin Connect account and register your GPS to it. From then on, you can click “Send to Garmin Connect” on cycle.travel, and the route will be wirelessly transferred to your GPS.