GPX - The German 'Motorcycle route'

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https://www.motorradstrassen.de/touren/motorradstrasse-deutschland

In several threads and posts I have pointed bods in the direction of the German 'Motorcycle route' which (as its name suggests) is a dedicated set of suggested joined routes, covering the four quarters of Germany, north, south, east and west. Whilst the host website has several very good maps of each of the four cardinal points and separate downloadable files comprising of small contiguous segments of each of the routes for each quadrant, I couldn't find anywhere where someone had joined each segment up, nor combined the four parts together. So, I thought I'd have a go.

Here is a screen shot the north segment, which is the first I have created in BaseCamp. It's looking OK, with a total circular length of 1,747 miles, starting and ending just to the east of Goslar:

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And here's the map of the same route as provided by the website:

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For anyone that is interested, here is how I did it, using Basecamp, installed on an iMac:

a. I created a folder called, 'German motorcycle route'

b. Within this I created a sub-folder, called 'North' and within this a separate sub-folder called, 'Separate segments'

c. On the website, I clicked on the first of the gpx files, 'Schotten to Bad Sooden-Allendorf'

d. This opens automatically in Kurviger

e. In Kurviger, I selected to export it as a GPX track. I chose a track export as it (usually) contains less potential errors when being exported into Garmin based software

f. I opened the downloaded track in BaseCamp, filing it into the 'Separate segments' sub-folder. I also gave the file a slightly new name, by adding the letter 'A' in front. This was only so that it followed the same naming convention as the website and would help me to more easily identify which ones I had done and which ones I hadn't. I also renamed the track itself, the same way. Renaming the tracks sequentially A, B, C etc etc also came to help me when I came to join the tracks together in the correct sequence A to B to C.... thro' to R, as described below

g. I then repeated stages c, d, e and f for each of the sub-routes on the website, until I finished with R

h. I now had 18 sub-files A thro' R, giving me all the track segments

i. I then coloured each of the tracks red, as opposed to Garmin's default track colour of dark grey, which is sometimes hard to see

j. As I am using a large screen iMac, it is very easy to display all the separate track segments together in one view but I wanted to have them all joined into one continuous track

k. I created a fresh sub-folder called (somewhat unimaginatively) 'North-Joined tracks', copying all of the 18 tracks into it

l. I then highlighted all of the separate track segment and asked BaseCamp to join them together into one continuous track. This is where a bit of careful sequential naming comes in handy. If you get a track out of sequence, the software will still join them all up, as that (it being a very dumb, but really quite clever bit of software) is what it has been told to do. If you list them in the wrong sequence, you will end up with a real dog's dinner. Get it right from the start and it's perfect. Exactly the same simple rule can be used to join route segments together.

The end result, as in the file I can share on Dropbox, I am happy with.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4v8omw53qpzodkq/german motorcycle route.gpx?dl=0

Now to do the next three sections. I will colour each of the four segments' tracks differently, just so they stand out distinctly when viewed as one.

Richard
 
Thank you.

I quite enjoy it in a way. If nothing else it keeps me looking for places to go on an ever growing pipe dream list. For example, I have just completed the west quadrant, which slots neatly under the north section. Like the northern route, it is circular, this time centred sort of on Koln. You could ride to say Aachen or Bitburg (or anywhere along the north or west circumference) and the ride the circle, taking however many days you fancied to complete the 1,430 mile full loop. By the look of it, it would be quite good, which is what I guess those that took the trouble to create the four routes intended in the first place.

Alternatively, you could take the western or eastern halves of the north route plus the west and east halves of the west route and ride all the way from near enough Luxembourg to the Baltic coast, returning back to Luxembourg down the eastern side. Or just swap them over, going up the east side and come back down the west. In other words, anyone can use their imagination what to do with it all.

Two down, two to go.
 
Well I certainly appreciate the work you put in and I think that, like me, you just do it for your own amusement rather than to benefit others but I still don’t believe it when you say you don’t speak even one word of German :comfort
 
Thank you.

I spend most of my time mispronouncing (and laughing at) place names and words in articles. It’s a ridiculous language, though I guess some bod in Gotha Erfurt (or Gotta Her Fart or Goata Effort) laughs just as much at places in the UK.

I have now got three of the cardinal points done, north, west and south. 5,246 miles if you rode the lot. My last lap of France was a touch over 3,000 miles door-to-door. This is not directly comparable, as the routes are circular in themselves but it does show how big Germany is, I guess.

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Hey-ho, now to do the last one....
 
The German 'Motorcycle route' - GPX files

Welcome, everyone :thumb2

All done!

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I now see that the whole lot centres on Schotten, in Hesse, population 10,000. I wonder how often bods are awaken'd from their beds by the sound of noisy motorbikes, all doing the 'Must do' routes?

The total combined length of the lot is 7,261 miles. The website's blurb rounds this up to 10,000 km which gives me some confidence that the GPX upload of the individual tracks from the website, via Kurviger and down into BaseCamp on my iMac was pretty much glitch free. It would make a fantastic jaunt, either in part or in full.

It is only fair to give all the credit to the fellow who conceived and created the route, which really must have been a labour of love.

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A Google translation of the website's words, tells me: The MSD * was officially opened on May 8, 2004 by the legendary designer Friedel Münch in Laubach / Vogelsberg and is the only motorcycle-related holiday route listed by German tourism.

So, hats off to the old boy.

Richard

* Die Motorradstraße Deutschland

PS I'll tidy up the Dropbox file and add it to the thread tomorrow.
 
Looking at it again on BaseCamp, you realise that it rather cleverly misses out most, if not all of the big cities. I have nothing against cities per-se, not least as I live in the middle of one of the largest (and nicest) in the world. Instead, the routes take the rider through the towns and villages of Germany top to bottom, side to side. Similarly, even the briefest of zooms-in on the BaseCamp map shows that the roads chosen are very often 'Good roads to ride', if you get my gist. It's work of art.
 
In a strange twist as to where the internet and a Google search can take you, I Google’d up the name, Friedel Münch, credited as the creator of the route. If what I read is correct, he seems to have been the inventor of the Münch Mammut (Mammoth) motorcycle. I remember seeing one or two of these in Germany and Holland in the 80’s and, if I recall correctly, one racing in some sort of open class event.
 
The German 'Motorcycle route' - GPX files

As a bit of fun and in the belief that I should ride at least one of the routes (or hopefully the lot) before I get too much older, I asked ViaMichelin (in Motorcycle ‘Discovery’ mode) to give me a route to Schotten, Germany. It’s 377 miles from Calais, taking mostly motorways through the congested area past Brussels and Maastricht. Then the open roads when you are past Aachen and Bonn. That is easily doable in a day. I chose Schotten, only as it seems to be the spiritual centre of the routes.

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Doing the same in Kurviger, gave an alternative of 477 miles, down past Charleroi, then across. Both would work, though the Kurviger route would involve more ‘feckin about’, sometimes taking small roads just for the sake of taking a small road.

https://kurviger.de/en?point=50.948...nerated=true&document_title=Calais - Schotten


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You now have the same A to B journey but with two different route suggestions: One from ViaMichelin, the other from Kurviger. Both pieces of software are free and both create a route suggestion in seconds. If it can be done on an iPad, you can do it, too.


You wouldn’t have to be a genius to look at the Michelin route to see that, under its magenta line A to B, is a big green area, which is imaginable as somewhere ‘interesting’ for motorcycling. Yup, it’s the Ardennes, which I guess everyone has heard of. Zoom the map in a bit and look at the roads. Now just work out how to ride along them and still get from A to B within the timeframe you have allowed yourself. Need some help? That’s easy, the software will do it for you. Just put the town names that you sort of fancy passing through in order into the route planner box. You’ll probably not have to put that many in. Bingo! One amended, quite nice route, A to B; just a bit longer, that’s all.

Here’s a example, doing just that. 477 miles, so exactly 100 miles further than the simple A to B ViaMichelin route but you have sort of done it yourself:

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I mention this only as an example of how easy it would be to create a very good holiday, using no more than this thread’s GPX files and a just a few clicks on the internet, involving nothing more than putting two place names (Calais and Schotten) into ViaMichelin and Kurviger, then tweaking their preferences a little. All in all, under five minutes on an iPad. Hopefully this thread and others like it will give bods the confidence to find their own routes and some inspiration as to how easy it is to create them, getting from A to B or even A to Z, via all the letters in between. The internet (and a little bit of imagination) will do it all for you.
 
Thanks very much for that. I appreciate the effort.
I like to follow Routes as opposed to Tracks so I've imported this into BC (PC version) and converted them to Routes, it only gives a start and an end point to I'll add the waypoints manually.
 
The German 'Motorcycle route' - GPX files

Thank you.

It’s been fun (of sorts) and, I hope, will give bods some ideas on riding some or all of it themselves. I also hope that my examples of how to get easy ideas as to how to get from A to B, will be of assistance when they come to creating any route of their own, no matter how long or short. The internet is a vast source of information, a lot of it very, very good. Married to the much maligned Google (and its ability to search with just three key words) and a bit of imagination, it is all anyone needs. To my mind the internet is nothing more than a giant, often free, guide book. Guide books have been around for years, the charming programme ‘Great Railway Journeys’, hosted by Michael Portillo, uses as its source and inspiration Bradshaw’s Guide, first published in the mid-1800’s when railways were very new. Use the internet, buy a map and maybe a book. Job done.

As I have said, I don’t speak a word of German. I tripped over the whole route thing by chance, flicking through an online magazine or just by chance looking for something else. I just tapped around in the webpages, safe in the knowledge they wouldn’t break. I then bookmarked the interesting bits (my iPad has a much better memory than me) for possible use at some later date. It really was no more difficult than that.
 
The German 'Motorcycle route' - GPX files

I like to follow Routes as opposed to Tracks so I've imported this into BC (PC version) and converted them to Routes, it only gives a start and an end point to I'll add the waypoints manually.


I used the track downloads from Kurviger just to reduce the chances of glitches. It was also very much quicker to do it that way, too. BaseCamp, at least on a Mac, should convert the tracks to routes perfectly. To be honest, I haven’t tried doing any of these yet, though I will have go, just to see what happens.

I say ‘should‘, as it sometimes gets a bit confused, particularly if a track takes a direction that doesn’t match with a known road on the map. It can also go a bit haywire if the track takes what was a two way street at the time but is now a one way street or a no entry. It won’t knowingly send you to your death. Similarly some preference settings can sometimes muck things up a bit. I had one track to route conversion in the alps that resulted in something that looked like an explosion in a wool factory and a timber yard combined, it took a lot of sorting out. It’s not a dark art by any means but a bit of patience is sometimes required, I guess. I have also noticed that sometimes some strange ‘hidden glitches’ can sometimes come through, lurking behind the data from Kurviger. This hidden stuff is not a problem most of the time but it can sometimes create an issue when a Garmin device imports a Kurviger sourced or derived route from its internal memory into the trip app on the device. Always check your routes before you leave home; GPX is good but it’s not perfect. But that advice applies to anything.

I don’t know how the tracks will display in other, non-Garmin software, simply as I haven’t tried. Bods may well have to do a bit of DIY to tug whatever it is you see around a bit. Use the track and the maps from the website linked in the opening post as a base and go from there. If anyone gets really stuck, the GPS section will help you out.

Have fun!
 
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schotten#Transport

The B 276 from Gedern by way of Schotten to Laubach is a notorious motorcycle road that attracts motorcyclists in droves on sunny weekends, not least of all for the motorcycle clubs along the road, such as the Falltorhaus ("Portcullis House"). There have been problems with street racing, which in 2005 left 12 people dead and another 129 injured. A particular problem on the highway is the "Applauskurve", a 180° bend in the road between Schotten and Laubach, known to motorcyclists all over Germany. There, onlookers – mostly other motorcyclists – gather to watch motorcycles take the curve at great speed, applauding – and even photographing or filming – the ones who go round the bend with the greatest lean.

Seems to be a biker schnitzel haus along the route http://falltorhaus-mototreff.9gg.de/ that has hosted some dodgy motorcycles https://gasgriffsalat.com/2020/07/20/check-honda-testride-truck-in-schotten/

IMG_9602-Kopie-1024x663.jpg
 
Thanks, Wessie.

Why I love German...

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I can only wonder what horrors a ‘Probe fart’ tour might entail.
 
Thanks a lot for that GPX file, and I really appreciate the time, effort and expertise!

Probe Fahrt could get messy as any test drive can!
 
The German 'Motorcycle route' - GPX files

Now to investigate vRSG60's problem.....

Back to business.

I think I may have found the source of your problem.

I summoned up one of the tracks, the ‘north’ section in full. It appears to be completely circular, the start and end points being at the exact same spot. BaseCamp and modern Garmin devices can cope with circular and figure of eight routes, so that in itself should not be a problem.

I then asked my new(ish) very large iMac to calculate the route from the track. Usually such a conversion is all but instant. This one was not quick. I didn’t time it but would guess at about 30 seconds, as the ‘work in progress’ bar set about moving along.

It did deliver up the full route in the end. I haven’t checked it in any detail but the key details and routing (turn by turn) instructions all seem to be there. I wonder if your PC is running out of ‘umph’, trying to make the conversion? I know nothing about home computers, so ‘umph’ is about as far as I get. Here are some screen shots:

The route converted from the track. It is 1,744 miles. I should have checked this distance against the track length, but it looks about right, taking an estimated time (non-stop) of 49 hours, 27 minutes and 27 seconds.

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The basic details, which as it only has a start and the same end point, can only show two places.

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The turn by turn instructions:

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It would be great if someone with a PC running BaseCamp could do the same, please. In the meantime, I’ll have another look at the route the conversion threw-up to see if it looks OK.
 


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