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I went ahead and signed up for Komoot in an effort to do more and more interesting bicycle rides. After half an hour of somewhat serious play, I decided that it is really rather good. Right now all I have done is plan, but that was very easy.

If you put in a start point and an end point, it will plan a route for you depending on what you want to do. So far so ordinary. Of course you can add additional waypoints that it will take into consideration. The really neat bit is that you can drag the route around, exploring alternative pathways, and while I know you can do that to some extent in other mapping applications, Komoot will tell you if you cannot actually follow the chosen route.

To begin with I tried my own route along the coast from Ladispoli to Ostia, and after dragging it down a couple of smaller roads was more than satisfied with the options. I particularly like that when you click on the little markers, it can show you things of interest, like the nature of the surface, nearby views, that sort of thing,

I saved that route and will probably ride it one day soon. I also looked at some of the routes offered to me that had been already planned, either by Komoot itself or by other users, and they are pretty interesting too, I saved one of those and that may be the first one I actually follow. When I do, I'll be able to comment on the way-finding instructions and see how it does with journalling the route and whether I can easily share that.

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