Running Pretty

Cycling, walking and jogging seem to be more popular than ever. At the moment, however, most of us are limited to exercising in areas which are close to our homes. If you want to find new nearby routes for your daily exercise then you could try Trail Router.

Trail Router is a routing engine which is designed to help you find new running routes, preferably routes which avoid busy roads. The Trail Router algorithm looks for routes that go through parks, forests or near water, and that avoid busy roads wherever possible. Trail Router can also be asked to find you routes which avoid steep hills.

Share your location with Trail Router and tell it how far you want to walk, run or cycle and it will suggest a route which avoids busy roads. If the suggested route is too long or too short you can just click on the forward or back arrows to instantly view a longer or shorter route. If you open the settings menu you can adjust your options, these include to avoid repetition, avoid hills, avoid unlit streets and to prefer green areas.

I often find that routing engines which promise to find me interesting routes don't work very well. They often seem to ignore the tow paths, cycle paths, and wooded trails near me that I use to avoid roads. However when I ask Trail Router to find routes near my home it seems to generate routes which I would use and these routes do actually seem to avoid the busiest roads.