05-Sep-2026 — Routes & Walk Directions Improvements #151

build 879 — commit 8fc4c88

What's new

• Routes: turn a walk's written directions into waypoints, edit them on the map, and make a route page a guided edit
• Route pages migrated from older sites carry their directions as paragraphs beside a GPX route, so the follow-me guide had nothing to show and the phone nothing to read. This commit gets a guide out of those pages, makes it editable on the map itself, and gives route pages an editor that walks you through them.
• Directions become waypoints. Generate turns from the route reads the shape of the route, names the roads and paths from OpenStreetMap, and hangs the page's written directions on the nearest turns as notes, spreading the rest evenly between them. Create waypoints from directions places one numbered waypoint per written direction instead. Every generated turn is a draft.
• A guide on the page. How to follow this route lists the steps as cards with distance, turn arrow, direction and note, hidden until Directions is pressed and shown below the map by default. Tap a step to see it on the map, or step through with Previous and Next; the map travels along the route between steps at a speed you can set. Full screen puts the directions beside the map, with a draggable width, route-up orientation, and the step in the address.
• Edit it where you follow it. In full screen, anyone with edit rights can press Edit: directions and notes become editable beside the map, pins drag along the route and snap to it, steps can be added between others or removed, there is Undo and a Discard that puts everything back as it was when Edit was pressed, clicking or dropping a pin selects its step, and the page saves itself as you go. Full screen fits the whole route with breathing space and shows in the address, from the page editor too.
• The route page as a guided edit. A page with a Route row opens in a stepper: About the route, Where it starts, The route, Directions, The write-up, Photos, How it's shown, with the full page editor one switch away. It reuses the walk editor's controls: distance in miles or kilometres, time worked out from distance and pace or entered, the Ramblers difficulty list, the walk feature checkboxes without the led-walk-only ones, and the location control with the place lookup. The write-up is draggable, removable blocks in the composer's style, with suggested sections. The written directions have a home on the Route row, always shown, hidden while the step-by-step directions are open, or never, and are what generating turns reads. Steps are edited in one place, the Steps list under the map, with the plain-text marker list gone; the editor points to full screen as the better place to do it.
• Route rows sit anywhere. A Route row can live inside a column, so a page keeps its main-and-sidebar shape; the row carries the start as the usual postcode and grid reference links, the stats and the feature icons in a grid without the walk page's shaded panel, so no separate Location row is needed.
• On the phone. A Directions button lists the written directions when a route has no waypoints; with waypoints, the Directions panel steps through them, the current direction stays up until the next waypoint, and the phone buzzes before a turn.
• Fixes found on the way. Authored waypoints no longer wiped by the page location; the Route row's details no longer dropped on save; two same-tick address updates no longer cancel each other; a very long route no longer blocks the server; hidden nested columns hidden for readers; nested rows no longer stretched; the route's downloads are one split button; the location editor shows the grid reference in the site's format and opens it on our own map; the route's popup uses its title rather than the GPX file name; the click-to-add-a-step switch and the guided editor's step are remembered.
• Generate turns or create waypoints from directions, on any map row with a route
• Step cards on the page, below the map, opened with Directions; full screen with the directions beside the map, resizable, route-up, speed slider
• Edit in full screen: text, drag, add, remove, undo, discard, autosave; one Steps list, no separate marker list
• Guided route editor with seven steps, walk editor controls throughout, block-based write-up, written directions on the Route row
• Route rows inside columns; the row shows start, stats and features
• Phone: Directions button and panel, direction held until the next waypoint, buzz before a turn

See also: Planning and following walk routes in the how-to guides, which walks through drawing a route, generating and editing its directions, importing from OS Maps and following a walk on a phone.