Tandem Club Rides Database

Cycleroutes are everywhere, in guidebooks, on leaflets and more recently, lots of websites have sprung up on the internet allowing cyclists to view them and store them.

However there are many issues. Remember Bikeroute toaster or Bikely? These were the Strava of their day, hugely popular, but now gone, simply because there wasn't a sustainable way to present and store them, so they and their routes were lost. Many sites have thousands of routes which sounds great until you try to find a reliable one that has been well researched and contains more than a line in the sand. Local Councils put millions into producing local routes with leaflets, some are even marked on the ground, but unless you know where to find these, things can be difficult.

As a result the Tandem Club Rides Database was formed with the specific intent to present reliable routes, many designed for Tandems and Cycle Tourists.

So where do they come from?

National Events - Every year the club rund at least two events with about 21 routes.

Regional Groups - Every month there are Tandem Club rides all over the country led by our local groups. These are put together by local cyclists

Leaflet Rides - These are Council sponsored rides and encourage local cycling.

National Rides - C2C, Reivers, North Dorset Trailway etc

Other rides put up by members

What makes Rides useful?

Places of Interest - There are over 9000 (and rising) places marked varying from cafes to castles to country parks. Each entry contains a description, web link, address, and a picture. They are marked by an icon that is colour coded, orange for food, pink for places of interest, purple for places to stay, black for children, green for bike, brown for travel etc.
By knowing what is there, you are able to either plan a route or see what you are passing on the ride. Unlike google where there are hundreds of places marked, rides has similar information but curated for a cyclist, you want a cup of tea, not a three cushioned sofa after all.
The ability to do this is unique to rides. Each place of interest has been manually entered (not from a search engine) In addition website entries are checked to see if the entry (particularly cafes) is still valid and defunct places are deleted.
This is the only resource where national attractions are listed together; National Trust, English Heritage, CADW and Environment Scotland. Local and National museums are added, in fact anything of interest to a cyclist.

Routes - There are over 900 routes in rides.
Every year the club organises fixed centre events, these routes are built by local knowledgable cyclists. They are added allowing you to stay at the centre and enjoy up to 15 good quality routes.
The Tandem Club have over 20 regional groups. Each organise monthly rides, many of these are in Rides. Therefore if you are visiting an area these are available
There are a lot of published routes, put together by local authorities with infrastructure to match and often a route leaflet as further explanation. These can be tough to find, but rides is collecting them
What rides does not have is a library of routes that are added by everyone, making curating a good route very difficult, the emphasis is on quality over quantity.

How to use this guide

The functionality of this system is vast. To guide you through it, step by step instruction are illustrated below. To allow easy navigation, each part has hyperlinks to further information, akin to chapters, so dive in and enjoy

Section 1 - Opening Rides

Opening Rides

You need to be a member of the Tandem Club and have your login details at hand

The URL is https://tandem-club.org.uk/rides so put this into your bookmarks on your phone/computer

Other ways to open Rides

Opening Rides.html  

Opening Page 
The program defaults to Tandem Club GPX/TCX Rides list
By default the selection shows the rides for the users main regional group in order of quality followed by most recently added first.
So if you are part of the Westcountry group, these are the rides you will see.
Click on the link below to explain the search criteria

Openingpage.html
 

To View a Ride

There is a "Select the Rides" entry form at the top of the rides main page that is used to search for rides matching the criteria entered.

To search for other rides enter the appropriate search criteria and click on the green "Search" button. The list of selected rides will appear below.

The group will select a particular regions group, a major TC event, or some other special groups such as "Touring" or "rides" for general rides.
The MapReference entry should be a GPS latitude,longitude number pair.
The Postcode should be the first 2, 3 or 4 characters of the postcode. The system will look for any ride with 69 miles of the location given.

You can now click on the rides picture to view the complete ride details and download the GPX and route sheets if available. Only members can view rides.
The route is shown on an OpenCyclesMap by default. The "A" button selects an aerial view and the "G" uses a Google map. You can interact with this map by long or double clicking on it. Once done you can pan the map with the mouse/finger and zoom in and out (buttons, mouse wheel or finger pinch).
You can show the map in full-screen mode using the full screen button at the top right of the map.

The "P" button pops up a place category selector. This allows you to select the various place categories shown on the map.

There is also a notes entry box at the bottom of the page where any user can add notes to this ride.

To Add a Ride

Use the "Add Ride" link to add a new ride to the system. This will present a form to add information on the ride. Most fields are optional.
  • Enabled: Enable this ride. If this is unchecked the ride won't be visible to anyone apart from admin people on the EditRides page.
  • Published: If this is unchecked only admin people and the author of the ride will be able to see this ride. useful when adding and editing a ride before it is completed.
  • Personal: This is a personal ride for the author only. Currently everyone can see these rides, but they can be selected as a list of rides for the logged in user.
  • PrivateToGroup: If checked this ride will only be seen by admin people and those who have the group of the ride in their groups of interest. This is used to hide rides for a particular event to those actually going to the event.
  • Group: The group for the ride. This could be a regional group,  a TC event, or a special linked to say the What's On events. (dropdown menu)
  • Route GPX/TCX file): Click the Browse button to upload the file for the Ride you are creating.
  • Route sheet: The route sheet in PDF format to upload to the system.
  • Route sheet (Editable file): A file that can be edited.
  • Route leaflet: A PDF file giving a description of the route, for example, some tourist office style information.
  • Title (gpx will set if present): A title for the ride. If not set will  be filled in from the name inside a GPX file.
  • Ride Ease: Three categories are available, easy, average and hard
  • Description Box: This is an area of free text. It is an opportunity to give more information. Examples are. Start Time, Who is leading the ride, Starting place. A synopsis of the ride (the more detailed the better)
  • Picture[0-5]: Up to 6 pictures for the list ride with picture0 showing as the main picture in the list of rides. You can either grag and drop a picture into the drag and drop box or use the select button. The program will resize your picture to allow for faster web browsing
  • Map Picture shown in Tours and Icon (If no Picture0): A picture for the map of the ride which is used in Tour lists of rides or as the picture Icon when a list of rides is presented if there are no other pictures.
  • Showcase Id: This links to a showcase of pictures for the ride. The numeric ID of the showcase needs to be entered, Note that of the ride is in an event group (like tcn2022), then any showcases with the same group will be shown automatically.
  • Postcode: Optional postcode allowing easy searches. (For a car park with no postcode, a google search giving a local business will give a postcode, use this)
  • Location (General Text): Optional general locating text. Could be a postcode or some general text like "Bristol" or "The peak district" etc.
  • RideLength (km) (gpx will set): The program will automatically fill this in.
  • Latitude: The GPS map latitude reference. Filled in by a GPX file if one is uploaded.
  • Longitude: The GPS map longitude reference. Filled in by a GPX file if one is uploaded.
  • Quality: This defines what we are trying to do. It relates to the quality of the information provided. The default is 2 and this is for rides with the a standard amount of information, such as a brief description and GPX/TCX. The more that is added, the higher the quality. When all the fields are filled with a good description, route sheet and pictures are included then a 5 is used. Quality 5 rides appear at the top of searches, as more are added these will stand out for members to use.
  • Category: Not used yet
  • Date: The date the ride happened/will happen
  • DateAdded: This is the date and time that the ride was added.
  • UserId: The number of the member who added the ride.
  • EmailAddress: The email adress of the person who added the ride
  • ModifiedDate: Things change. This gives the date of the last edit.
  • ModifiedUserId: Who edited the ride
  • Route: The GPX file to upload to the system. It is possible to upload multiple GPX files at a time. A ride entry will be created for each one with the rides information set the same.

Once the form info has been added click on the "Save" button.

To Edit a Ride

View the ride to be edited and use the large green "Edit" button at the bottom of the page. Alternatively there is a (E) link on the rides title in lists of rides. Only the rides owner or admin people can edit a ride.

Adding Extra Pictures

As well as the 6 pictures that can be added to a ride, it is possible to link a showcase of pictures to the ride. There are two ways to do this.

  1. If the ride is for a major TC event the ride would normally have its group set to the name of the event such as tcn2022. Any showcase that has the same group will be listed on the ride when viewed and the user can click on these to go to the showcase of pictures.
  2. A specific showcase of pictures can be created in the showcase system. If the rides's "Showcase Id" field is set to the numeric ID of that showcase it will be listed on the ride when viewed and the user can click on these to go to the showcase of pictures.

Adding a ride if you are an RO
If you are a Regional Officer (RO) then you can easily add a ride from the WhatsOn tab
AddingarideasanRO

Places of Interest
The UK is filled with cafés, castles and parks, but where are they? 
One of the unique features of the rides system is the ability to view and add places of interest.

These are marked by a coloured icon. 
Icons

The information contained in a place of interest
content

Adding a place of interest
adding

Finding a place of interest
finding

Editing a place of interest
editing

Places come and go, but sometimes we can't quite be sure. Google can have the wrong information, websites can stop working on a temporay basis, the cafe may just be changing hands. Rides provides the ability to flag these
FaultyPlaces

Reporting a change
This could be a closure to a recommendation, feedback is really helpful
Only the person who created the place of interest or an admin can alter and entry, but there are ways to inform
reporting
 

Tours

The Tours system add the ability to group a set of rides into a single tour with web pages, news and other items associated with it.

Please click on the link below for further details

Tours.html

Maps and External Resources

There is a lot of information out there, both on the internet and in the form of leaflets at information centres. Rides acts as a library to bring these together

Resources.html

Navigate

There is a new experimental feature on the TC Rides system. There is a Navigate function that will show where you are on a map and show all of the huge number of Places of interest around you that Neil and others has added to the system. Useful for finding the closest coffee stop!

Navigate

National Events
If you are running either the National, International or Easter event, the link below takes you through the process
Nationalevents.html

Administration

The system will validate URL's given in Place's Web1 and Web2 fields over time. It will validate 180 places every day just after midnight. If an y URL's are found not to be working they will be added to the todo/info system under the category places/url and at the low priority level of 0. They can be viewed at the URL https://tandem-club.org.uk/info?sel_category=places/url&sel_priority=0. An email will also be sent if any bad ones are found with this link.

An administrator should go through the todo list fixing the place entries and then marking the todo item as done or deleting it.

Note that the system may think some websites are faulty even when they actually are ok and may miss some that are actually down, but it should catch the vast majority of issues.

Future

This is an initial prototype system, however since 2020 an enormous amount of work has gone into this with 10.000 points of interest and 1000 good quality rides. For the near future we hope to add better ways of search for rides including a clickable map for ride searches.
If there are any features you would like to see please contact webgroup@tandem-club.org.uk. Interest.html Navigate/index.html