Steve&Michele,

Many years ago Coca Cola changed their recipe after doing the 'Pepsi Challenge' and discovering to their horror that more and more people were preferring the taste of Pepsi. One of the great marketing debacles of our time followed with sales of the 'New Coke' bombing and a hasty launch of 'Classic Coke' restoring some normality.

The ensuing postmortem revealed the fundamental error Coca-Cola made: while people did prefer the initial taste of Pepsi, they preferred the overall drink experience of Coke. I think you may be making the same mistake here. A 5 mile sample on a 1200 mile route is probably not representative.

I note you haven't given the exact route in terms of any settings (gravel, paved etc.), nor told us if you're doing this on the app or the website, but by using the coordinates given, CT gives me the exact route I'd expect - away from the main road. I see two hills, a grand total of 30m climbing, although steep for some.

Local knowledge gives you the option of adding a visa point or two to avoid the estates.

I also see the alternative (using Street view directly from the route) and it seems a busy 2 laner with no shoulder and a rather nasty side margin. I'm thinking that the traffic data for that road is so poor as to override CT's normal avoidance of hills. Given the choice I'd prefer CT's suggestion.

Which brings me nicely to my next point. Liking something is subjective. We're all different. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it didn't do a good job. I'm not a fan of the tone of your post but you seemed to think it appropriate. Subjective.

A quick perusal of this forum will show many instances of the designer digging down into local quirks to improve things. A pleasant request rather than a rant might land easier.

My genuine suggestion to you if you are not familiar with CT is not to use it for your LEJOG starting next week as there just isn't enough time to really get the most out of it and on unfamiliar roads not trusting our planner is a shortcut to stress and unpleasantness. Use whatever you are more familiar with and trust. But do come back at another time. For route planning, especially recreational and long distance routes, it is streets ahead of the competition. 

However, if avoiding hills is your thing then there is no shortage of LEJOG routes available online to download. Your time might be better spent researching those. The Cycling UK forum has a subsection devoted to LEJOG.

As for being an echo chamber I'd remind you that this is the CT help forum.

As someone who has happily let CT plot me long & short routes in various places I have no qualms recommending it over just about any planner I've come across unless people have specific and inflexible needs. It has its quirks that with some experience we can learn to anticipate. Ironically, on longer routes CT generally avoids urban areas so the scenario depicted in your 5 miler are less likely to occur on a 1200 miler. 

Best of luck with your adventure!

“You can’t take a small route and judge”

Ok, I am going to say that and I’ll explain why. 😉

cycle.travel doesn’t like busy roads. That’s its raison-d’être. If you’re happy cycling busy roads, then it’s not the route-planner for you and you should use RideWithGPS or something like that.

You don’t say which route you would have preferred c.t to choose in this instance, but I’m guessing it’s the B3054. c.t is choosing to go via Rollestone Road instead because the traffic levels are significantly lower.

These differences are accentuated on short journeys. On a long journey, c.t has more of the road network to play with, and so you don’t actually see many of these supposed ‘diversions’ because it can send you somewhere else entirely. For example, if I ask for a short journey from Stow-on-the-Wold to the Yew Tree then it’s a big diversion to keep me off the busy A429. But if I ask for a longer route from Stow to Burford then, in percentage terms, the increase over the busy road route is much less: there are more roads to choose from, so c.t has a better chance of finding a quiet route that isn’t indirect.

Ultimately there are dozens of route-planners out there and no one planner is going to be right for everyone. If c.t’s preference for quiet roads isn’t to your taste that’s absolutely fine!

Cycle.travel DID used to route up steep hills to avoid potentially busy roads. I would get routed up long local climbs with some 15-20% gradients just to avoid a few hundred metres of A-road, and then still have to do the rest of the A-road anyway. It doesn't do that anymore! I just checked and it does the sensible thing unless I force it up the climbs using via points.

The thing is... the 'steep climbs' that you are complaining about are NOT steep climbs, and they are also short! 

So what you are basically saying is that you pretty much want to avoid all hills if possible even if that means riding on busier roads? There are other route planners that can do that.

Alternatively, do what I do - use cycle.travel, check the routes that it comes up with, and use via points to make it go on any preferred alternative roads. I plotted a 100 km route at the weekend which had a 40 km mid-section that I was unfamiliar with. I only used 1 via point to make it come up with the route that I would have chosen myself and that via point was to avoid using 200 metres of poorly surface backstreet which I spotted in Streetview.

You can probably make it use your preferred local flat route using just 1 via point.

I wouldn't trust a LEJOG route from ANY planner! I would check the entire route on Streetview beforehand and make any changes that I deemed necessary.