Live-sharing  my  location  when  cycle  touring

A fair number of the rides I do are Travelling Ouballie rides – click the link to learn what those are, and how to pronounce it. Not everyone can join me on such rides, and that’s OK – we all have busy lives. Like many of you, I enjoy sharing vicariously in the adventures of others. Many of you follow me on Twitter, and some follow me on Instagram, so you already know that I tend to share many photos of rides I do. Earlier this year, on my Cheshire Ring ride, I live-shared my location, using an app called Glympse. That made me think that I needed a better way to live-share my location.

RideWithGPS  to  the  rescue

For many years now I’ve been a vocal fan of RideWithGPS. So much so that I made a conscious decision to not replace my ageing Garmin 500 with a newer model. Instead, I bought a rugged, waterproof phone, and rely on the RideWithGPS Android app for navigation, and recording my rides. I didn’t realise that RideWithGPS also does live-sharing, using exactly the same web URL for the map each time. That last part is vital, as I don’t want to have to update this page each time, just to get the live-sharing to work. To me it’s perfect, as I am already using RideWithGPS as a cycling app anyway.

Sometimes  I  do  &  sometimes  I  don’t

I really have no wish to live-share my location 24/7 with the world. Besides, I have a full-time job (I know, right?) and you’d be bored mindless watching me stay in one location. That simply means that most of the time, the map below won’t show my location. In fact, I won’t share my location on all my rides, either – sometimes I need blissful solitude. However, on some cycle tours, I certainly will turn on live-sharing, and then – should you want to – you’d be able to see where I am on the map below.

You  can  do  this  too!

All you need is an account on RideWithGPS, and the app on your phone. Oh, and yes, they do free accounts.

You don’t have to publish your live-logging map to a web site – you can just share it with friends, if you like. Even better, privacy settings allow you to restrict your live-logging map to just your friends.