integrations

We all have our favourite loops. They're great rides, but if your riding never goes beyond them, you miss out on a lot. Tile hunting breaks that pattern: it divides the whole world into squares and gives you one simple task – visit every one of them. Suddenly that gravel track ten kilometres away, the one you've never ridden, becomes a goal, and your familiar home patch turns into unexplored territory.

This article explains what tile hunting is, why so many riders are hooked on it, and how Trailmap helps you plan routes into new tiles – now with your StatsHunters and Squadrats tiles shown directly on the map.

A tile hunter's map around Tampere, Finland: red squares have been visited, the green area is a solid "max square", and the grey squares are still waiting to be claimed.

Why become a tile hunter?

Tile hunting turns exploring into a game, and that's exactly why it works. A few reasons so many people have got hooked:

• Your home area opens up again. Tiles take you to places you'd never otherwise go: a quiet village lane, a farm track beyond the fields, a lakeside or a hilltop you never knew was there. Plenty of tile hunters say they only found their new favourite routes close to home by chasing squares.
• Every ride has a purpose. "Shall I go for a ride today?" becomes "which three tiles am I picking up today?". Motivation stays high even when training goals don't.
• A small adventure is always close by. You don't need a trip abroad or a famous route – unexplored ground often starts a few kilometres from your front door.
• Planning is a pleasure of its own. Building a route that collects as many new tiles as possible over a sensible distance is a puzzle many riders enjoy almost as much as the ride itself.
• Trips get extra purpose. On holidays and weekends away, new tiles are just around the corner, and every trip leaves a permanent mark on your map.

The game can also be ruthless: as your square grows, there's always that one awkward tile left on the edge – in the middle of a bog, on the far side of a lake or up a hill with no road. That means gravel tracks, trails, pushing the bike, and sometimes walking or paddling. Tile hunting suits gravel riders, mountain bikers, runners and hikers best – on a road bike you'll soon run out of reachable tiles. And if the tiles start dragging you just anywhere, have a read of our thoughts on a smarter gravel game, a different way of gamifying exploration alongside tiles.

What is tile hunting?

The idea is simple. The map is divided into a fixed grid – the same one web maps use to draw the screen as map tiles. When a ride you've recorded passes through a square, that square counts as "visited" and is coloured in on the map. The aim is to visit as many squares as possible.

The standard grid is zoom level 14, which divides the whole globe into 16,384 × 16,384 squares – about 268 million tiles in total. The squares shrink the further you go from the equator: a side is about 2.4 km at the equator, roughly 1.5 km in the UK and central Europe, and around 1.2 km in the Nordic countries. Wherever you live, a tile is on the scale of a good ride – small enough that you can reach every one, and big enough that each has something to discover.

The number of tiles isn't the only measure. Tile hunters chase a few established goals:

• Total tiles – every tile you've ever visited.
• Max square – the largest solid square of visited tiles, e.g. 8 × 8. For many this is the real game, because a single unvisited tile on its edge stops it growing.
• Max cluster – tiles whose four neighbouring tiles have all been visited. Your largest connected cluster shows how much of the area around you you've truly covered.
• Smaller tiles – as well as the standard tiles, Squadrats offers squares eight times smaller, about 150 metres across, called squadratinhos, so there's plenty to collect even in your own neighbourhood.

You record your rides as usual, for example with a Garmin or your phone, and they flow via Strava to the tile services, which count your visited tiles, squares and clusters.

Good introductions to tile hunting

To see what tile hunting looks like in practice, start with these:

• A new cycling sub-culture has revolutionised my riding (BikeRadar) – a rider's first-hand account of how tile hunting changed their riding, and how to get started.
• Tile Hunting: How to Get Started (We Love Cycling) – a step-by-step beginner's guide, the first part of a series that also covers advanced strategy and the risks of the chase.
• Tile Hunting: Which Platform Is Best for You? (We Love Cycling) – Squadrats, StatsHunters, VeloViewer and others compared.
• Intro to Tile Hunting series (VeloViewer) – tile hunters tell their own stories, from road riders turned gravel explorers to hunters planning rides around cake stops.
• VeloViewer Explorer Score & Max Square – the tile mechanics explained by the service that started it all.
• Life in squares (Cycling Weekly) – why square-collecting is so addictive.
• RideEveryTile – records, leaderboards and statistics from the tile-hunting community.

Tile services in brief

Tiles aren't collected in Trailmap but in separate services that read your rides from Strava. The most popular:

• StatsHunters – free. As well as tiles, plenty of statistics, achievements and heatmaps. A browser extension for Chrome and Firefox shows your tiles on route planners' maps.
• Squadrats – modern and easy to get started with: sync your whole Strava history in one click, with the basics free. Smaller squadratinhos on top of the standard tiles.
• VeloViewer – the original tile-hunting service, with the most comprehensive analytics. Tile hunting needs the paid version.

If you're just starting out, Squadrats or StatsHunters is a good choice – both now work directly with Trailmap.

Tiles on the Trailmap map

The most important part of tile hunting is route planning: where's the road or trail that actually gets you into that one missing tile? Or will you have to push or carry the bike a short way through the woods? For that you need two things on the same map – your own tiles, and a good outdoor map that also shows gravel and forest roads, trails and how rideable they are. Trailmap brings the two together.

Trailmap now supports the two most popular tile services:

• StatsHunters – the web version (from 1.23.13) supports the StatsHunters browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox, so your tiles are drawn on the Trailmap map while you plan a route.
• Squadrats – supported in both the web and mobile apps.

There's also a new quick button on the left edge of the map that hides the tiles for a moment and brings them back.

StatsHunters (web)

1. Install the StatsHunters browser extension for Chrome or Firefox.
2. Log in to StatsHunters, copy the API code from its settings page and paste it into the extension (click the extension's icon in your browser toolbar).
3. Open Trailmap in your web browser – your tiles appear on the map.
4. To hide the tiles for a moment, use the new quick button on the left edge of the map; press it again to bring them back.

StatsHunters tiles on the Trailmap web map while planning a route

Squadrats (web and mobile)

1. Connect your Squadrats account to Trailmap: open your Trailmap account settings and, in the Squadrats section, enter your ID in the "Squadrats user ID" field – you'll find it in your Squadrats profile.
2. In Map settings, under Squadrats, choose what is shown on the map: squadrats, squadratinhos, the grid and "New squares on route".
3. To hide the tiles for a moment, use the new quick button on the left edge of the map; press it again to bring them back.

When you plan a route, Trailmap also tells you how many new squadrats and squadratinhos it would collect – so you can see straight away whether it's worth stretching the ride by one more square.

Squadrats squares on the Trailmap map

StatsHunters and VeloViewer as an overlay map (vv.fork.pl)

If you want your StatsHunters or VeloViewer tiles in the Trailmap mobile app too – for example to check mid-ride that your route really does hit the missing tile – you can add them with vv.fork.pl and Trailmap's own maps feature. vv.fork.pl works with both StatsHunters and VeloViewer accounts, and the tiles appear as a live overlay map on all your devices. Note: this requires a PLUS subscription.

First, create your tile map at vv.fork.pl. It gives you a tile server address of the form https://vv.fork.pl/<ID>/{z}/{x}/{y}.png, where <ID> is your personal identifier.

Then, in Trailmap on the web:

1. Open the "Maps" menu in the navigation bar and choose "+ Add map" at the bottom of the list (see also the maps guide).
2. Give your map layer a name and enter https://cors-proxy.trailmap.fi/vv.fork.pl/<ID>/{z}/{x}/{y}.png as the tile server URL – that is, add cors-proxy.trailmap.fi/ to the start of the address you got from vv.fork.pl. Tick the "Overlay map" option and save.
3. In the "Maps" list, tick the OVERLAY column box next to your new map so it appears in your overlay map list
4. Switch the map on from "Overlay maps" in Map settings. The same overlay map is now available in the mobile app too.

Other ways: KML files

You can also export your unvisited tiles from a tile service as a KML/KMZ file (use the service's "export" function) and open it in Trailmap as a basis for route planning. Read more about other integrations in the Garmin, Strava and other apps guide.

Tips for planning a tile route in Trailmap

• Check what's actually in the tile. Trailmap shows gravel and forest roads, trails and barriers better than most maps. Before you draw a route into a distant tile, make sure there's a passable way in – and not just a road that ends in someone's private yard.
• Collect tiles on loops, not dead ends. A good tile route runs along tile edges and picks up several new ones on the same ride. Clipping the corner of a tile is enough – you don't need to ride through the middle.
• Leave a safety margin. A GPS track can wander by a few metres. If your route only grazes the edge of a tile, you might miss it. Ride well inside the tile to be sure.
• Send the route to your Garmin. Once the route is planned, send it to your device to navigate – taking the right turn at the right junction decides whether you get the tile. See the Garmin guide.
• Make the most of the seasons. Where winters are cold enough – as in the Nordic countries – frozen lakes and bogs open up tiles you can't reach in summer. In summer, you can combine a ride with a hike or a paddle.
• Respect local access rules and landowners. Access rights vary a lot between countries: the Nordic countries have a broad right to roam, while in the UK and much of Europe you need to stick to public roads, bridleways and permitted paths. A tile is never a reason to ride through gardens, crops or nature reserves. The best tile hunters leave nothing behind but a GPS track.

Get going

Open your tile service's map and look outwards from your front door. The nearest grey tile is probably closer than you think – and beyond it might be your next favourite route. Plan a route in Trailmap, send it to your device and go and get your first new tile. After that, the map will never look the same again.