James Houston
Menu

A ride planner

The ride planner with a ride called Dickens London: on the left the ride’s details, cycling, a loop, starting at Servewell Cafe in Bermondsey, with the first stops, the Marshalsea Prison wall and Lant Street; on the right a map of central London with the route drawn in red through 14 numbered stops
Planning a Dickens ride round London, with 14 stops starting at the Marshalsea Prison wall.

I’ve built a ride planner, which went into beta today. You can use it to come up with ideas for rides and plan them out on a map, and then share them with other people. For now you need to be approved to use it.

Ideas

The Discover page uses AI to suggest ideas for rides. It searches the web for interesting places to visit and gives links to where it found them, so you can check them yourself. If you’re planning for a club, it also looks at the club’s past rides. You can give it a theme, an area or a date, or just see what it comes up with. Or if you click Plan it for me and give it a theme and somewhere to start, it’ll draft a route for you.

It reminds you that the ideas are only a starting point, so you should check opening times, events and transport before you set off.

The planner’s Discover page: an engraved angel blowing a trumpet beside the question Do you have an idea in mind?, with buttons for Build it myself and Plan it for me, and below it a form to get inspiration by activity, theme or area, date and starting point
The Discover page.

Planning

Once you’ve got an idea, you add stops and the route is drawn on the map as you go, using roads and paths that are good for cycling. It can also suggest stops for a ride and tell you why it picked them. Rides can be loops or one way, and you can plan for walking as well as cycling.

When you’re happy with it, you can send the route to Ride with GPS, or download a crib sheet as a PDF to take with you.

Sharing

Ideas are private to begin with. When you’re ready, you can share one with other people so they can see it or help edit it, and they can leave comments and say if they’re interested.

Leave a comment

I read every comment before it appears, so yours won’t show straight away. Your email address is only used to tell you when it’s up, and is deleted after that.