Komoot releases enormous bank of ready-made gravel routes

If you've ever found yourself hankering for a bit of gravel action but weren't sure where to go, Komoot may have the answer.

The route planning app has launched a bank of 160,000 ready-made gravel routes, which it says is based on the most popular off-road trails used "in local communities worldwide".

The new feature addresses what can be a real problem for road riders when they first take up gravel – they know all the tarmac inside out and back to front, but off-road paths and tracks are a whole different ball game.

With the new Komoot feature, finding one should be simple enough, with users able to filter their route search by distance, time taken and elevation. Each route can also be edited to best suit the rider, and saved for later if desired.

As with Komoot's road routes, riders can upload photos and rate the route they've ridden, which it says means "the whole gravel community has a detailed insight into the best adventures, and to contribute to the continuous improvement of the gravel Route search results and coverage."

This sort of feedback has been key to the development of Komoot's gravel routes, it says. It has used an algorithm which employs "suggestions, tips and photos" from the Komoot community, as well as its own mapping system to devise the new routes.

"This number is constantly growing," Komoot says, "and route coverage and search results will continuously evolve with fresh community input."

We checked out the new gravel routes feature ourselves, and found an impressive 10 separate options starting within a few miles of the front door. Some of them looked very straightforward, others requiring a good deal of fitness – but they were all clearly classified as such.

Says product manager Tom Eldred: "Our community’s feedback is pivotal to developing features that tangibly help people explore more of the great outdoors.

"We launched the new gravel routes to indulge our users’ desire for ready-made gravel adventures — ones that are both easy to search and reliable to navigate worldwide."

Komoot was founded in 2010 by six friends from Germany and Austria, and has grown since then to serve what is now 40 million registered users, it announced recently.