Trip planning

[RachelAnne]

I've been planning a route trough France to Leon, Spain on Google Maps, avoiding toll roads and to a great extent the Autoroutes. I then exported the route and tried importing it into Tyre. Every time I try to import it into Tyre the route preview is fine but when I do the final bit it always changes the route to include toll roads and Autoroutes.

Having got a bit bored trying to make this work I had another look on the internet for route planning options and I've come across Furkot, which (although I've not yet registered to get potential advantages) seems to be an excellent website that appears to give me all I want, even down to planning petrol and food stops (though some suggestions for petrol stops don't actually have a petrol station at that point).

Can anybody here tell me if this website is as good as it appears to be, and/or are there any websites out there that are even better?

[Walkabout]

There are a few suggestions in the linked thread below, but there is not much feedback about how these softwares perform.

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...hich-one-82808

I haven't seen anything that drags me away from a paper map, covered in stains.

[DaleC]

I have used Furkot for planning my last 2 trips and while it is very good for planning out days, albeit a bit clunky at times, my biggest gripe is that the gpx trail does not exactly follow the road. You will notice that the longer the distances are between points on the map, the less likely it is to exactly follow the road.

Therefore, the actual gpx plotting is not entirely accurate. This may be fine for following motorways across countries, but not great when on minor regional roads in Europe.

One of the issues that I have with google maps for planning is that the most recent versions do not allow you to have a significant number of "waypoints" (I think 10 is maximum?)

Long story short - Furkot is good for general planning, however, I use MotoPlaner - Motorrad Touren Planung leicht gemacht for actually creating the gpx route to export to my Garmin. The underlying maps are either Google or OSM and does not appear to limit the number of waypoints.

NB: Motoplaner is in German but if you will quickly learn the functions and if using within Google Chrome, a "right click" with the mouse on a word and selecting "convert to English" will solve your problem

[Quique de Vidania]

In Spain you have petrol stops each 40-50 km in the highway.


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[OTRA]

Feeding your bike in France or Northern Spain is not a problem,in France we have lost a lot of petrol stations in the 80s 90S but since ten years now every single mini-market in small villages or hyper-markets in large towns are open 24/24 and your are sure to get the lower price of the area ,and i think it's the same all around western and northern Europe, i'm riding a GSA with a large tank (33L) and a spare can on the rear of my panier , the petrol from that can is allways finishing in my lawn mower after having travelling 1000s of KM around Europe , except one time when i help an english biker stucked on the side of the road near Valogne.
Leon area is nice for biking , small roads small villages and not a big trafic , you can push up to Bardenas Reales Nat. Park .
Have a nice trip
Ride safe and cool
Roger

[motoreiter]

Originally Posted by OTRA

Feeding your bike in France or Northern Spain is not a problem,in France we have lost a lot of petrol stations in the 80s 90S but since ten years now every single mini-market in small villages or hyper-markets in large towns are open 24/24...

Sure there are lots of pumps but from my experience many of them are not attended for extended periods and do not accept most credit cards, and IIRC, many do not accept cash either. At one point I had to wait at a petrol station for someone to show up and give someone cash so they could buy petrol for me with their card. Not ideal...

[Walkabout]

Originally Posted by RachelAnne

even down to planning petrol and food stops (though some suggestions for petrol stops don't actually have a petrol station at that point).

Yep, there are lots of changes in the sales outlets for fuel.
I guess it is a full time job for some one to keep the maps up to date on such features.

Originally Posted by OTRA

Feeding your bike in France or Northern Spain is not a problem,in France we have lost a lot of petrol stations in the 80s 90S but since ten years now every single mini-market in small villages or hyper-markets in large towns are open 24/24 and your are sure to get the lower price of the area ,and i think it's the same all around western and northern Europe,

That ties in with my experiences in refuelling in Europe; France in particular has modernised it's outlets greatly in recent past and that process is continuing - French supermarkets are dominating the market for fuel in France, much like the UK, with prices to suit.

Originally Posted by motoreiter

Sure there are lots of pumps but from my experience many of them are not attended for extended periods and do not accept most credit cards, and IIRC, many do not accept cash either. At one point I had to wait at a petrol station for someone to show up and give someone cash so they could buy petrol for me with their card. Not ideal...

Yep, they are automated which, at a stroke, has solved the earlier issues of "everything closed on Sundays".
Pay at the pump is very common now which means that the fuel stations are completely un-manned with overview by CCTV.
I can't remember seeing a pay at the pump facility in France that accepts cash.
Either of my two UK issued debit cards has worked fine across all of France and northern Spain - for fuelling, I prefer debit cards compared with credit cards (the latter can get a large chunk of credit "reserved" against your overall credit limit for some days - that can mount up and block the use of your c card elsewhere).

Slowly, nations are moving toward cashless societies.

[Walkabout]

Originally Posted by RachelAnne

Can anybody here tell me if this website is as good as it appears to be, and/or are there any websites out there that are even better?

It seems that there's not a great deal of interest in this whole subject matter, so far as the HUBB is concerned anyway - I have come across masses of "jaw jaw" elsewhere about specific, favoured, softwares but it is easy to be a tad sceptical about at least some of those who write their reviews.

Hey ho, it's not the end of the world!