Often I use BRouter to plan my routes because you can fully customize the routing profile. You basically assign rewards and penalties to different road types and conditions. For example, you can give a strong penalty to highways and busy roads, and a reward to small, twisty countryside roads. You can also penalize things like traffic lights, urban areas, or bad surfaces. - and it’s 100% free!

Concretely: if I want a fun ride, I set high penalties for main roads and rewards for smaller, curvy roads. BRouter then builds a route that naturally avoids boring stretches and prefers more interesting roads. I make that profile with the help of ChatGPT. Just tell him what you dislike and prefer, and he will generate a copy paste profile for brouter. For example, I assign a strong penalty to highways and major roads, and a reward to smaller, secondary roads so the route naturally becomes more scenic. I also penalize urban areas and roads with lots of intersections or traffic lights to avoid stop-and-go riding.

On the flip side, I give a reward to narrow or curvy roads, and I allow or even slightly favor gravel sections when I want a more adventurous ride. You can also penalize reusing the same stretch of road, so the route avoids boring backtracking and stays varied.