How do you plan a hiking route? Do you stick with the reliable old way and pour over paper maps, or have you taken your planning online?

As I explain in the video below, I fall into both camps, but the times I do use tech, it’s now increasingly becoming komoot that I turn to. The reason? Because it’s just so quick and easy.

While other route planning software for trails usually requires you to draw out your route along a digital map bit by bit, dot by dot (Viewranger, I’m looking at you), komoot lets you pick your start point and destination and in seconds it will work out the most straightforward route for you. The best thing is, you can then tweak the route to your exact requirements. So if you want to visit a certain pub along the route you can just set it as checkpoint, or if you want to take in more upland, or perhaps more light trails, you can change the terrain setting and difficulty.

Watch the video to find out how I plan a long-distance route, create a circular walk in just a click, use komoot to plot a section across pathless terrain, and then ultimately use it to navigate. I’ve got a big trek coming up in 2020 that could take two weeks to walk, and this is going to make the planning process a hell of a lot easier.

There’s just one downside to this app in my opinion, and that’s that there’s no capacity to overlay OS maps, which, let’s be honest, if the preferred mapping for most UK walkers. Still, the komoot mapping does present you with a good amount of information.