Creating a GPX route from scratch, without a mobile app

Why start from a blank map

Not every outing follows an already-marked route. A new neighbourhood to explore by bike, your own variant of a familiar trail, a training run that needs to be exactly 42 km: in these cases, there's no GPX track to download anywhere. The only option is to build it yourself.

In GPX Edit Pro, that build happens directly on a map, with nothing to install and no account to create.

Dropping the first waypoints

The basic idea: every click on the map adds a waypoint. Between two points, a path appears automatically — not a straight line, but a real route calculated by a routing engine that knows the existing roads, cycle paths and trails.

Adding a point in the middle of a segment forces a detour; removing it automatically recalculates the track between the two remaining points.

Picking the right travel mode

The calculated path depends on the selected mode: road cycling, MTB, trail or walking. A road-cycling mode favours tarmac surfaces suited to narrow tyres; an MTB or trail mode allows narrow trails and unsurfaced paths. The mode can be changed mid-track — useful when part of the outing changes character, such as a walking section in the middle of a bike route.

Areas with no mapped network

Some stretches exist in no map database at all: a beach, a stretch of water for kayaking, an off-trail section in the mountains. For these, pure free-hand drawing lets you draw directly without routing, switching freely between the two modes within the same route.

Checking the elevation profile before you go

Once the route is drawn, the elevation profile builds automatically from the plotted points. This is the moment to check the ascent matches what you had planned — see the guide on reading an elevation profile for more on this step.

Checking the track on a satellite view

The standard map background shows mapped trails, but not always their real-world condition. Switching temporarily to a satellite view lets you spot a path overgrown with vegetation, a missing bridge, or a section that no longer matches recently changed terrain — useful before confirming a route through a rarely-used or recently altered area.

Splitting an overly long route into stages

For a multi-day trip, there's no need to plot each stage separately from the first point. It's often simpler to build the whole route in one go, then split it afterwards at the planned overnight stops — one click on the map or the elevation profile splits the track into two independent files. Splitting at regular intervals (every 30 km, say) also generates several stages at once without placing each one by hand. See the guide on planning a multi-day trip for how to enrich each stage afterwards with food and accommodation markers.

Common mistakes when drawing from scratch

Three pitfalls come up often:

• A point dropped on the far side of an impassable obstacle. A river with no bridge, or a railway line between two points, can trigger a detour of several kilometres with nothing to flag it — only a glance at the actual path, not just the total distance, reveals it.
• A forgotten mode switch partway through. A route started in road-cycling mode then continued on a forest track sometimes keeps the original mode if the switch wasn't made at the right spot, producing a track that follows a parallel road instead of the intended path.
• Setting off without checking the corrected elevation. A track drawn on a flat map has no real elevation data until a correction has been applied — the ascent figure shown before that step isn't reliable.

Naming, adding markers and exporting

Last step: name the route, optionally add markers at specific points (a water source, a junction not to miss), then export. The resulting GPX file is compatible with the main GPS computers and watches on the market — Garmin, Wahoo, Suunto, Coros, Polar — as well as Strava and Komoot for direct import. For a group ride or a track meant to be printed, an A4 PDF road book can be generated instead of a plain GPX file.