I'm routed!

I had made the decision to move the "master" copy of the routes from Garmin Basecamp to GPSies.com because of the better routing capabilities. The issue with Basecamp is that a route can only have a single mode of travel (such as car or bike) and the routing algorithm makes it impossible to (for example) hop from a road to the parallel cycle path, or go the wrong way down a one-way street which although it would be hazardous in many situations is perfectly normal inside the "old town" area of many cities such as Arezzo and Florence.

Having decided that I was happy with the GPSies routing, the next question was how well it would transfer into sensible turn by turn navigation on the Garmin GPS, so today I tested it out. I went to GPSies and laid down a route that used streets, footpath, cycle lanes, shared path etc., moved the GPX route to the Garmin and it worked perfectly!

I have also this weekend completed the task of updating the wiki to refer to all the new (routed) maps that are in GPSies. They can be downloaded from the wiki but just in case I will retrieve all of them and store them in Google Drive as well. I've included waypoints for a couple of places where lunch looks likely along the cycle routes. Some days I expect us to have lunch at our destination, it depends on the distance, the amount of climb and the dawdle-to-take-photos factor.

Small optimisations

I've spent a little time this weekend optimising the last two days of riding. In particular I managed to take some back-tracking out of the route through Monte Leone. This has also reduced the distance and the amount of climbing by a small amount.

For the last day I have changed the route to connect up with the cycleway that runs from Novafeltria down to Rimini because it gives us a much easier run into town following the river. This has in fact made the route slightly longer but it should take about the same time.

I've also cross-posted the wiki to the Facebook pages of each of the hotels just in case they are interested and to remind them that we are coming!

bikemap.net is not living up to expectations

I'm afraid I am going to have to move the map display of the daily routes from bikemap.net. It is proving too unreliable. Such as shame as the presentation (when it works) is really good.

Update: I have moved all the presentation to http://www.gpsies.com which has exactly what I need, and Klaus Bechtold, the site owner has been incredibly responsive in answering my questions. The wiki now contains links to GPSies for:

• The overall route overview map
• The route map for each day
• A QR code link for each day (takes you to that day's route at GPSies)

As an added benefit, the daily maps allow you to download a copy of the route in multiple formats.

Map presentation

If you have visited the wiki at https://sites.google.com/a/keogh.net.au/apennines/home, the pages for the individual days have a map of the day's ride. These have been built using the online facility at www.bikemap.net, using the .GPX files originally built in Garmin Basecamp. The bikemap.net site has been going through some glitches as a consequence of a major upgrade to the site's software. I hope it stabilises soon. One of the "coming soon" features that was broken by the upgrade will allow me to replace the primitive map that is on the home page.

Perhaps one day Google Maps will have similar functionality and I will be able to use it instead.

Second thoughts about Anghiari and Sansepolcro

Change of plans: we'll stay in Sansepolcro, and take a day trip back to Anghiari if we want to. The logistics of getting to and from the festival in Sansepolcro looked difficult and it is better to stay where the action is!

The other advantage of the change is that it shortens by a little the next riding stage to Novafeltria, which is likely to be the most challenging day of the entire trip in terms of climbing.

I've updated Basecamp and the wiki and located a hotel.

Day 3 Update

After consulting Bikely and an other couple of web sites I have made some improvements to the Day 3 route. Now we will continue east along the Arno for a little bit, which takes us around the busy and hilly section from Firenze Centrale to the autostrada. So now instead of going through Impruneta we go through Grassina and join the previous route before Strada in Chianti. It is a little shorter and takes out one descent into a valley and climb out again. More importantly it puts us on quieter roads in Firenze.

I've updated the Wiki page for day 3, and also added a browsable map of each stage to the relevant page. There are now enough changes that I've republished a new whole-of-route map and profile too.

Still more rework of Day 2

Instead of dropping down south of the Arno at San Miniato as originally planned, I've settled on a more northerly route that doesn't hit the Arno until Signa or perhaps even closer to Firenze. This route is somewhat shorter and has less traffic, and passes through some beautiful countryside. Down along the Arno it is somewhat more industrial, probably because of proximity to railway lines and plentiful water and the traffic density is correspondingly higher. I had originally been keen to use as much of the Via Francigena as was practical, but given that for this area it is entirely notional, with no dedicated path, there isn't much point.

The terrain is mostly gently rolling hills with lots of grapes. Along the way we pass the Padule di Fucecchio, which is the largest remaining swampland in Italy. We'll get a good view of the area from the road as we pass through the village of Massarella. There are some pretty towns as well, Cerreto Guidi, and Vinci (as in Leonardo da-) where there is the inevitable museum and bars with evocative names. After Vinci the road through Vitolini and Camignano climbs over the Tuscan hills and back to the Arno at Signa or even later. It is around 400m of climb, but that is only 200m more than going the other way.

The wiki has been updated.

Maps, maps and more maps

I started out the planning using the OSM Velomap Italy. It was OK but cycle routes had annoying little gaps in them which cause Basecamp to do all kinds of weird routes which no number of intermediate points will fix.

Last night I discovered that http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/ has what is (to my eyes) much better rendering of what are essentially the same data. I mean who needs those huge arrows for one way streets? That's only advisory on a bicycle anyway :-) So 90MB of downloads later (one copy for Basecamp, one for my GPS), I have better maps to work with! I must say that the process of requesting and receiving the map data is very polished! I wonder who is paying for it?

That's why cartography is an art as well as a science. These OSM maps are probably good enough to use on my Garmin when we are travelling. I may still purchase the City Navigator maps for use in Florence, Arezzo etc. Of course my other point of reference is Google Maps but in Italy today there is no bicycle routing,  Maybe by the time we get there?

Update

Yet another source of OSM cycle mapping data http://www.openfietsmap.nl/downloads/europe has excellent cartography and contours as well, so the advantages of both the others.

Only problem is the size of the download, over 3.8GB as a single zip file foe western Europe.