Share a route

Step one

Your file

A GPX file, exported from whatever you plan your rides in. Most apps call it “Export GPX” or “Share → GPX”. Nothing leaves this page until you press send at the bottom.

Step two

Where it starts and finishes

Most recorded rides start at your own yard. Sharing that whole line puts your home on a public map and tells other riders there is parking at your gate, so drag the start forward to the first place somebody else could sensibly box up and get on.

Whatever you cut off never leaves this page. If the file already starts somewhere public, leave both handles where they are.

Step three

Now tell it what to say

This is the part that does the work, and only you can do it. The file gives us your line. It cannot tell a rider which way to go at a fork, where the gate is, or which of two paths is the right one. That comes from you, and what you write below is read out loud as the rider gets there.

Which places need words? Imagine riding it with a friend who has never been. Wherever they would slow down and look at you is where BridleNav needs to say something. A bend in a single track with nowhere else to go needs nothing at all. A fork, a gate, a road crossing, or a spot where the obvious-looking path is the wrong one — those all need words. Most routes come out somewhere between eight and twenty.

Write it the way you would say it out loud: “left through the gate by the barn” is worth ten of “turn left”, because it names something a rider can see. Mark the gates, water and livestock too, even where there is no decision to make — a rider likes the warning. Those need no words.

The firm turns are listed below ready for you to write. Shallow bends start set aside because most are just the path winding; nothing is hidden, so put any of them back if it is really a junction.

Add a point — tap the map Remove a dead end

Step four

About the route

Step five

Parking

This is the part riders thank you for. A postcode often drops somebody towing a lorry at the wrong end of a long lane.

Step six

Two or three photographs

Two is the minimum. They are what makes another rider pick your route over somebody else's, so a view, the going underfoot and the parking are worth more than three of the same gate.

They are shrunk here in your browser before they are sent, which also strips the location tag the camera put in them.

Choose photographs

Step seven

You

Send it for review