Tile hunting is a way to combine cycling, GPS tracks, discovering new places and a little competitiveness. Here I share my own experience with tile hunting by bike on road, gravel and mountain bikes – from collecting my first map tiles and tile hunting route planning to using StatsHunters, Squadrats, VeloViewer Explorer Tiles and Wandrer.
The article was originally written in 2023 and I keep updating it.
- What is Tile Hunting?
- Training, Fun, Adventure and Competition
- Who Is It For?
- In the Beginning There Was Strava
- How to Get Started
- My Approach
- Route Planning
- Route Planners
- Recording the Ride and Live Tile View
- Photos from the Rides
- Which Bike to Choose?
- Distances
- Weather and Surfaces
- Which Square Is Worth More?
- Squadrats and Wandrer
- What Next?
What is Tile Hunting?
How can tile hunting – collecting map tiles – be described simply? Perhaps like this: Visualised completion of defined map areas (squares) using GPS tracks from human-powered activities :-) For me personally, tile hunting is mainly a game and a source of fun: a way to make long bike rides more interesting, to get to places I would normally pass by on training rides, and a useful excuse to discover new landscapes.
I came across this (mainly) cycling phenomenon a few years ago on the popular Czech discussion site bike-forum.cz. (Calling it a “phenomenon” is, of course, a bit of Czech-style exaggeration – as far as I can tell, only a handful of cyclists in the Czech Republic collect tiles, with a particularly strong concentration around Litoměřice ;-)) I do not want to go into all the technical details – the whole subject is explained clearly on the site mentioned above. Instead, I want to look at tile hunting through my own experiences and observations, accompanied by plenty of pictures.
Tile hunting itself reminds me of Amidar, a favourite arcade game from my childhood. (Every summer, travelling fairground caravans used to arrive near our home at Máchovo jezero, and among other attractions they had arcade cabinets with what would now be prehistoric computer games – around 1982.) The character collected dots around the perimeter of a rectangle, which was then filled in/completed.
Later I had a similar idea for some kind of Mapy.com application in which blocks around Prague would be coloured in and collected in the same way. Like many of my other ideas, it remained unrealised. When tile hunting appeared, however, it more or less fulfilled what I had wanted from an exploration/sport/local-discovery project. All you need is a device that records GPS and can navigate along a planned route, and you can set off by bike, on skis, running, in hiking boots or even in a canoe ;-)
Training, Fun, Adventure and Competition
In general, tile hunting can be seen not only as a competitive activity, where the goal is to complete the largest square, the largest connected area or simply the greatest number of tiles, but also as a way of exploring the world around you. You keep discovering new places, get to know your own country, learn about history and architecture, visit new towns and forgotten villages, wander through dark forests, ride through deep ravines and explore mysterious corners.
You have adventures on roads, forest tracks, farm roads and narrow singletracks. You cross rocky sections, sink into sand, swear your way through mud… Electric fences, wooden barriers, impassable roads blocked by fallen trees, streams and restricted areas all get in the way. Fun, adventure and physical effort. To some people it may sound a little childish, but compared with many other ways of spending free time, I do not think it comes out too badly ;-)
Who Is It For?
I think tile hunting requires a certain type of person. You have to enjoy discovering new roads and riding through new areas. You cannot mind apparently unrideable sections, occasionally pushing the bike uphill or downhill, crossing waterlogged meadows or muddy tracks. And, of course, a bit of competitiveness helps – otherwise you could do all of the above without GPS, tables or tiles.
A simple example is commuting to work. A colleague of mine rode exactly the same route to and from work for several years, even though dozens of alternatives were available both on roads and off-road. He simply wanted to get to work as quickly as possible. When I joined the same workplace, I was delighted by the variety. I printed a large map assembled from A3 sheets and highlighted the roads and trails I had ridden with a marker – the number of combinations seemed endless… A few years were enough to ride almost every road, trail and singletrack. But the variety still fascinates me: at almost every junction I can choose a different direction and still end up at the same destination.
In the Beginning There Was Strava
Then came the boom in GPS recording – first in mobile-phone apps and later in dedicated bike computers. One website gradually came to dominate it all: Strava.com, which over time became a very particular kind of social network. It provides a wealth of interesting statistics from GPS ride data. Clear and accurate records work not only as training diaries, but also enable all kinds of comparison and competition – segment times (KOMs), number of rides through particular sections (Local Legends), and so on.
People compete over total distance, elevation gain, longest rides and much more. Statistics can also be followed on various websites that use Strava data – StatsHunters, VeloViewer, Ride Every Tile, Wandrer, Squadrats… For some users this turns into a genuine addiction, with the joy of riding pushed into the background and competitiveness and online social interaction taking over. I hope that does not apply to me ;-)
Let me return to those personal predispositions for tile hunting. A busy paved cycle path follows the Vltava from Prague towards Klecany. Running roughly parallel to it are several off-road trails, including lovely singletracks, descents and viewpoints (see my favourite “12 viewpoints” route). Looking at a couple of random Strava segments in the area, the paved Slunce–Saturn segment has been ridden by 16,593 cyclists (including 99 riders from the Bike-forum club). A technical climb to a viewpoint leads out of the Drahaň valley, and there the corresponding numbers are 407 and 12. Not everyone is tempted by unexplored paths. Some people use a bike as transport and simply take the shortest route to work and back; some train deliberately on the same routes; others do not want to be distracted by unknown roads.
How to Get Started
But back to tile hunting itself. You collect tiles either deliberately or incidentally. The latter might happen during races in new areas or on holiday. (Every spring I regularly go on a cycling “training camp” in regions I have not explored by bike before – in previous years the Šumava mountains, Slavkovský les, the Beskids, Česká Kanada and the Krkonoše.) Your strategy also depends on whether you want to enlarge your square or your cluster – the connected area of neighbouring tiles.
When I started, I already had a very good base from hundreds of rides, so my square grew quickly. (My first GPS logs are from 2013, although I lost many of them when I moved from offline training logs to online applications.) Almost every ride brought in a new tile that helped enlarge the square.
The first apparent obstacle was Prague Airport at Ruzyně, but fortunately there are roads and tracks around the airport fence, so that turned out to be easy enough. To the west, however, I soon hit a genuinely impenetrable area: the Lány game reserve. According to StatsHunters, it is apparently possible to get in – probably with a hunting licence – but that is a slightly different form of hunting. Literally. And yes, I do of course have a plan for Lány ;-)
For example, according to Strava I recorded 326 activities in 2022, including runs, hikes and rides to and from work. Of these, 35 were deliberate tile-hunting rides, with an average length of 131 km. (That figure includes the Jesenický Surovec race and a nine-day spring cycling camp in the Zlín region.)
My Approach
This brings us to the question of how seriously to approach tile hunting. If your cycling ambitions are limited purely to collecting tiles, you can insist on various orthodox rules. At first, I counted only cycling activities. Later I discovered that other activities count too – running (580 km last year), cross-country skiing or hiking. (I had never recorded most of my walks, so I only started using hiking for tiles last year, for example on the ridges of the Krkonoše.) And then there are situations where the edge of a tile lies just beyond a fence… I really do not carry my bike over fences.
And should every ride start from the same point? Since I commute by bike, that would make little sense for me. Nor do I always want to ride through the whole city first. Heading south from Prague, I am quite happy to take the metro and avoid the crowded centre and the smog. A few times I have taken a train part of the way and then ridden home one-way. (Always check the wind direction first ;-)) With a car it is simplest of all: instead of driving somewhere for a weekend hike, I can drive there for a bike ride. But for that to make sense to me, I need to spend much more time riding than driving – at least around 120 km, or roughly five hours off-road.
I remember looking for the longest climb I could find a few years ago. I clicked together a route and it showed me 20 km uphill in the Krušné hory. It turned into a seven-hour ride with wonderful climbs in an area with very little traffic. I also keep returning to Džbánsko and the České středohoří. When I spend a weekend in my home region, I head for the Lužické hory, Ještěd or Kokořínsko. On foot, on a road bike, gravel bike or MTB. Thanks in part to tile hunting – and to having ridden as many roads and trails as possible – I can then plan the most attractive route for whatever I want: the fastest, flattest, hilliest and so on. Usually I spend one weekend day cycling on my own and the other hiking with my wife.
Tile Hunting Route Planning
Tile hunting route planning is different from ordinary cycling route planning. The shortest or fastest route is often not the best one, because the main goal is to connect missing tiles into a practical ride. I usually plan routes with a combination of map tools, StatsHunters tiles, Squadrats and GPX tracks.
The aim is usually to collect as many tiles as possible along the way, ideally in a systematic way or by preparing an area for future visits. For example, today you can ride the road sections, then return with the MTB next time to “pick off” the off-road gaps.
There are plenty of other variables to consider when planning. On an MTB, for example, I prefer climbing on a wider, gentler track so that I can descend on the steeper, more technical terrain. On the road bike I think similarly: I enjoy climbing hairpins, but on the way down I would rather have a straighter, steeper descent.
You can also plan around the proportion of major roads. I try to avoid Czech first-class roads almost completely, so they make up only a tiny part of my routes. If there is no alternative, I at least want to spend as little time on them as possible – preferably downhill. In general I do not like flat country; I prefer hilly landscapes with little traffic and good asphalt.
Tile Hunting Route Planners
There are many route-planning tools – for example Komoot, Mapy.com, BRouter, Ride with GPS and Strava’s own route planner. The combination that works best for me is Komoot + Mapy.com.
For the actual route planning I use Komoot most often. With tile hunting I need not only normal routing along roads and paths, but occasionally the ability to draw a short section outside the mapped road network – for example when I only need to penetrate a few dozen metres into a missing tile. The option to turn off “Follow ways” is therefore one of Komoot’s main advantages for me.
I use Mapy.com mainly as a checking tool. I download the finished route from Komoot as a GPX file and open it in Mapy.com. At questionable locations, the detailed maps, aerial imagery and Panorama let me check whether a road is really paved, surfaced or perhaps only a farm track. Photos are no guarantee of the current situation, of course – everything can change around the first bend, and several times I have ended up on gravel with the road bike.
Mapy.com would otherwise be very pleasant for this kind of planning, but for tile hunting it has two disadvantages for me. It does not allow off-grid planning, and when a layer of collected tiles is displayed through an extension, working with the map becomes noticeably slower because the tiles are rendered progressively. My usual workflow is therefore Komoot → GPX file export → check in Mapy.com.
For tile hunting itself, the Squadrats extension is essential for me (I previously used StatsHunters). Once connected to a Squadrats account, the extension can display both collected and planned tiles directly over the maps of supported route planners such as Komoot, Strava or Ride with GPS. While drawing the route I can immediately see which tiles I have already visited and which ones the route still needs to touch. The extension also works not only with standard squadrats, but with the smaller squadratinhos as well.
Komoot also allows part of a route to be drawn outside the known road and path network. With “Follow ways” switched off, points can be connected directly. This is useful, for example, when you only need to enter a tile briefly or plan a short section outside a mapped path. Naturally, this does not mean that the section will actually be passable on the ground.
At the start you can also choose whether you are riding gravel, MTB or road, and the planner offers suitable route options accordingly. Komoot can be connected to many bike computers (I have used it myself with Wahoo ELEMNT Bolt 1 and 2 and Hammerhead Karoo 3), so planned routes can then be synchronised directly to the navigation device.
For Strava there is also the Strava Map Switcher extension by Liskin, which adds alternative map layers including Mapy.com. Strava can, however, change the conditions under which third-party applications and extensions work, so I regard tools like this more as useful extras than as the foundation of my route planning.
Tiles During and After the Ride
For some Garmin devices, the EveryTile app is available and lets you view your route together with the tiles while riding. This is especially useful when you have to take a detour, improvise and are not quite sure where the tile boundaries are. The same is possible with the Hammerhead Karoo extension, where the tiles are displayed as a separate map layer.
Deep valleys and dense forests can also be tricky when collecting tiles. Poor GPS reception may shift the recorded track, so even if you physically passed through the right place, the GPS line can end up ten or twenty metres away and the tile will not count. And sometimes the opposite happens: a tile is credited even though you were never actually there…
On StatsHunters, which collects various tile-hunting statistics and achievements, a newly uploaded route is initially shown in a simplified form using straight line segments. To see the actual shape of the ride, you need to switch to the detailed/smoothed view. Sometimes this makes little difference; in other cases it can change whether a tile is counted. Squadrats processes the GPS track differently and uses the original recording, so the resulting statistics may differ between the two websites.
Photos from the Rides
Taking photos is an integral part of almost every ride for me. It is not about photographic art, but rather about choosing a significant place – something that will make you want to return there, or perhaps encourage other cyclists to visit it too.
Of course, there are rides where there is not much worth photographing – no landmark, no particular curiosity, no road disappearing enticingly over the horizon… But you can always photograph a muddy bike or a fresh scrape ;-) Strava allows photos to be associated with GPS coordinates, so they can be displayed on the map exactly where they were taken. The photographs therefore also serve as a visual diary of the rides. When writing the captions for this article I identified older photos from their EXIF data – I matched the date each photo was taken to a specific ride in Strava’s Training Log.
Strava segments along a route are interesting too. They quickly show how heavily used a road or trail is. Sometimes fewer than ten cyclists with Strava accounts have ever ridden a particular section, and more than once I have found completely “virgin” stretches with no segment at all. Occasionally I create a segment on an interesting section and only afterwards discover that nobody on Strava had ridden there before me…
Which Bike to Choose?
I have already mentioned the choice of bike above. I primarily plan routes for the road bike, because that accounts for most of my mileage. If a route contains more off-road sections, I plan an MTB ride and try to include as many areas without road sections as possible. In winter I use the gravel bike, which otherwise serves as my commuter. For mixed riding on roads, fields and forest tracks it is ideal. It is less suitable for genuinely rough terrain with steep climbs and descents, at least because of the lack of suspension and the gearing.
I have of course ridden unsurfaced roads on the road bike several times, but it is mostly a test of nerves. Sometimes a tile lies only a short distance from the road, so I take the risk. I have had very few punctures, but I still try to avoid unpaved surfaces on the road bike. In the České středohoří, for example, I rode over some slugs on a descent; small stones stuck to the slime on the tyre and eventually cut through it… In the Křivoklátsko area, a short off-road descent ended with a stick caught in the drivetrain and a bent derailleur hanger.
Distances
It is obviously very individual, but a deliberate road-bike ride for tiles is only exceptionally shorter than 100 km for me. (My longest single ride so far is 333 km.) Gravel and MTB rides can be shorter, although in terms of time they often work out the same. In winter, dedicated tile-hunting rides are relatively rare – apart from the temperature and icy surfaces, darkness is another limitation, so I mainly do local fitness rides (or, more recently, rides for squadratinhos – more on those below).
Because I do not have many time constraints, during the season I also use extended rides home from work for cycling. In summer I can fit in a ride of up to about 130 km, although by now there are not many unvisited tiles left within that range. In June and July it is also possible to set out very early – leave at five in the morning and arrive at work at nine with 100 km already done. There is less traffic and I avoid the heat. Or the other way round: leave work at two in the afternoon and it is still light at nine in the evening…
Weather and Surfaces
Of course you can ride in any weather and at any time of year. Sometimes a few drops of rain do not matter; at other times a ride becomes a source of endless frustration… A muddy farm track, a forest road churned up by logging machinery, a singletrack trampled by horses‘ hooves, a road under repair with fresh loose gravel scattered over an asphalt patch…
In winter I am usually off-road, and then my toes become the limiting factor. Winter cycling shoes are a given; in harder frost I add two pairs of socks, plastic bags and sometimes disposable heat packs… Plus an insulated bottle and warm tea in the hydration pack.
Which Square Is Worth More?
The real question is whether any of this should be taken so seriously. Is a square in the Elbe lowlands worth more or less than one in Haná, the Krušné hory or the foothills of the Krkonoše? How do you account for having a military area just behind your house, compared with living in a landscape with no restrictions? What if a 100 km route gives you 300 metres of climbing – or 3,000? Tile hunting must be a rather different experience for someone in Poland than for someone in Switzerland. If a lake blocks your way, do you give up the fun, get into a canoe or swim across? Are you riding in an area covered in asphalt, or do you need to choose the bike carefully for every outing? Fortunately, it is only a game. If enlarging the square becomes impossible, there is always the cluster.
Squadrats and Wandrer
Another chapter is Squadrats – a web service, a route-planning extension and, today, also a standalone mobile app for Android and iPhone.
One of its main challenges is squadratinhos – smaller squares derived from classic tile hunting (1 tile = 64 squadratinhos). They are a pleasant diversion during winter, when longer rides are less practical. After a few rides I had to admit that they do have a certain charm ;-) I discovered that although I had already explored a lot, it was still possible to go further: to find new paths and unknown singletracks, experience the excitement of riding through the middle of a homeless camp, or somehow “accidentally” end up inside fenced-off compounds…
Both the website and the app provide a quick overview of the tiles collected on individual rides, as well as rankings showing where you stand in different categories (Übersquadrat, Yardinho…). As a route-planning extension, Squadrats is indispensable for me.
Wandrer takes a somewhat different approach. It focuses on completing roads and paths – or entire areas such as villages, towns, regions and countries. You earn points and various achievements for riding new roads, and you can compare how much of the road network you have covered in different areas. Wandrer has both a free version and a paid plan with additional features and unlimited activity-history syncing. I paid for it for a year out of curiosity; these days I use only the free version, but I still appear in the rankings…
What Next?
I am not sure whether I will manage to see everything I would like to see in my lifetime ;-) Then again, it would be rather sad if life were reduced to collecting experiences. At the moment I have no idea how the season will develop, given various health complications. (Hypochondria is another of my hobbies :-)) Perhaps instead of cycling I will just walk around with a camera and document religious monuments – my backup project.
Almost any activity can easily turn into an obsession. For me, tile hunting is first and foremost about adventure, discovery and fun. There is certainly some competitiveness too, and perhaps a long-standing complex as well – the urge to see more than everyone else 😉
