What do the colours mean?
Every section of your route has a colour and one to four chillies depending on how hard it is on an adventure bike. It is the same in the planner and in the analyzer.
Easy
Wide, compact dirt track or fine gravel. No ruts or obstacles. Gentle slope (<10%). Suitable for any bike with some ground clearance.
Medium
Track with moderate ruts, coarse gravel or loose dirt in places. The odd dip or loose rock. Medium slope (10–20%). Needs basic experience.
Hard
Narrow track with deep ruts, very loose or rocky ground. Tricky descents, blind corners, possible mud. Slope >20%. Off-road technique required.
Expert
Extreme going: scree, bare rock, deep mud, limit slopes or very narrow passages. Only for well-prepared bikes and riders.
Paved
Roads and streets: they have no difficulty.
What makes a section harder?
- The slope: the steeper, the harder, especially going down.
- The condition of the track: ruts, loose stones, broken stretches. If we do not know a track's condition, we judge it by the tracks that continue it.
- The surface: sand, mud or rock are tougher than gravel or compact dirt.
- How narrow the way is: a singletrack with a slope or stones is harder than a dirt track with the same. If we know nothing about a singletrack, we treat it as hard.
What counts most is the worst of the section: a very steep descent is not made up for by a good surface.
Ways closed to motorbikes
If a way is closed to motorbikes or motor vehicles, the planner does not go through it and the analyzer flags it. In towns it also respects one-way streets.
Tap any section on the map to see why it has its difficulty: type of way, surface, slope… With your maximum difficulty you decide how far you go; the planner never suggests anything above it.
What difficulty should I set?
When you pick a profile in the planner we already set a starting maximum difficulty, and then you raise or lower it as you like:
- Maxitrail: up to Medium
- Trail: up to Hard
- Enduro: up to Expert
Where the data comes from
Everything comes from open data: the ways and their tags (surface, track grade, access) from OpenStreetMap, maintained by volunteers, and the slope from the IGN and Copernicus elevation models.
That is why there can be mistakes: a track the rain has broken, a way closed with a chain that nobody has tagged, a section with no data that we estimate from its type. Difficulty is a guide for preparing the ride, not a guarantee: if something does not look right when you get there, the terrain has the final say.