Originally Posted by
HobbesOnTour
For touring, if using apps or online planners, it's probably best to be familiar with a few and to see which one best suits you. I'm not sure they all work the same in all countries, either.
This is, unfortunately, the correct answer. And do you plan to be using this on a computer or on a mobile device only?
A while back I had to plan an impromptu route on a mobile device - I tried the free versions of all the apps I knew of (Osmand, Komoot, Garmin Connect, RWGPS, some online websites) and most produced either a terrible route or only a visual, a route that I could not use - the difficulty was the I wanted a GPX track in the end to import into Osmand. Garmin Connect was the only which recommended a good route but only after I turned on the 'use popularity' feature. Adding intermediate waypoints was a bit clunky though. Even then, I had to request the
desktop version of the website on my
phone to export to GPX. I have found that it is absolutely essential to my enjoyment of being on a bike that I do not go on 'crap/unsafe' roads or go directly "from A to B". In 99% of the cases using "popularity" or "heat maps" solves this problem, but it's not without its faults.
cycle.travel looks pretty nice, but this is on a big screen