Shameless feature request.
The new Eurovelo route planner enables routes using just the EV routes but nothing else. I'd dearly like to be able to extend that to plan tours just using established cycle routes of any description and nothing else. In the context of cycling.waymarkedtrails.org, just red, blue and possibly yellow and purple routes. Perhaps provide checkbox options for which class of route is included. Of course the user would have to pick start and end points that exist on a recognised route.
Comments
I have looked into this in the past, but unfortunately OpenStreetMap’s cycle route data (which cycle.travel uses as its base map) isn’t really reliable enough for this!
One little error in the map data can mean that cycle.travel has to divert away from the signposted route. Here’s an example: https://cycle.travel/map?from=&to=&fromLL=51.141521,-0.493247&toLL=51.140945,-0.491786. You’ll see that c.t has to make a diversion off-route (because some bright spark has put a stile on the cycle route and marked it “no bicycles”, when they really meant to put it on an adjoining footpath instead).
With the general-purpose routing it’s ok because the detour is pretty short. But if we were only routing along cycle routes it would be much harder – I think we’d end up with a 21km detour over several big hills.