Do you have a GPS and are looking for bike routes? Or do you have routes to share? If this is what you want, here you will find information that might be useful. After this text, there is a list of online services where users upload and share GPS routes.
Some time ago I bought my first GPS to save my routes and to discover new paths. After using it a while, I began to ask how many routes would have been described with GPS, which areas of the earth are more or less covered by GPS routes ... Can I travel all around the world following GPS tracks shared in internet? In what areas people are more fond of the bike and save and share GPS tracks? To appease my curiosity on the subject, I started making a map of bike routes that are shared on www.wikiloc.com and www.everytrail.com . As expected, the world is not bikely homogeneous... The conclusion is clear: in "rich" countries people can afford to stick to cycling for pleasure and do it with a GPS. I think there is still plenty of time to see many other areas of the planet covered by GPS routes to have a global map ... Do you see in the map the silk road?
Wikiloc.com is a complete web of routes and GPS points of interest around the world. The website offers a number of routes, not only related to cycling, but also for a lot of outdoor activities as varied as hiking, kayaking, mountaineering, skiing, riding, paragliding, among many others.
The web is plenty of tracks uploaded by the users themselves. Basically it is a social web based on its own users as a source of information. As the web has a huge number of users, the number of routes is high and the it is very dynamic: comments on the routes, forums, photos, etc..
It is necessary to register to upload and download routes. The user intereface offers a simple and convenient way to manage user GPS routes, both for themselves and for others. Users can view and easily navigate in their routes, in files that otherwise would be easily forgotten or lost in particular computers ...
It is very intuitive and easy to use, and it has been translated to many languages by the users. For those more interested in technical issues, the web uses Google Maps API , is used as a layer in Google Earth, and has been awarded in the Geoturism Challenge 2009.
EveryTrail is a global web2.0 platform for geo-tagged user-generated travel content. It allows users to share travel experiences and plan trips. EveryTrail offers sharing travel experiences through interactive maps that include photos plotted along your trip route. It offers tracks uploaded by users, and also classified guides for most popular destinations.
It is free and useful for a wide variety of trips, not only bycicling trips: It includes road trips, sight seeing tours, sailing trips, hiking, cycling, flying, hang gliding, geocaching, skiing, kayaking trips and more. EveryTrail has trips from over 80 countries in all corners of the world.
The rich and vibrant EveryTrail community is a great place to connect with others who share similar interests in travel and outdoor activities.
Everytrail offers the possibility of download trails from your phone, by using EveryTrail Mobile Apps. It offers services as mapping your trip route while you move, add trip photos and videos to your map instantly, Share trips right from your phone and find and follow trips from other travelers...
As main disadvantages, it is only offered in English.
List of other web resources. I still had no time to describe them...
