What’s the point?

Not much, for a lot of people. But the collecting aspect, combined with optimizing routes, and then going out and discovering an unknown place while doing some exercise is in the overlapping sweet spot for some.

Tiling is really easy to start.

Once you start tiling, you’ll find that there are probably just a few key missing squares needed to be visited to grow your max square or cluster significantly. However, as you progress, these become increasingly hard, and you’ll need to spend more time optimizing your routes to ensure you collect the most tiles per ride. It’s ok to take a train or car to the starting point of your trip, but only those tiles count that are collected by human-powered means of transportation.

Some of us do Tiling because we can’t realistically compete in speed, distance, or other classic disciplines, but are still competitive. Others have just moved to a new neighborhood and found Tiling a great way to discover it. Or simply felt bored having to take the same route again and again. Or just enjoyed maps since childhood and love a good planning session. There are many reasons — if you feel you check some of these boxes, consider Tiling.

How can I start?

The easiest way to start is to register a Strava account (free tier is enough if you plan your routes somewhere else), then sign up for Squadrats, one of the main sites that you can use for Tiling. Connect the two, and you’re good to go. The terminology on Squadrats is different from the one explained above: they call max square “Übersquadrat” and max cluster “Yard”. Otherwise, all the rules are the same. Plan a route to collect a few missing tiles, record your trip with Strava and you should see your covered area growing in Squadrats automatically.

The way to do Tiling for a long time was exclusive to VeloViewer, where this whole game started back in 2015. For beginners, the UI of Squadrats is a bit easier to approach, and in order to have ongoing synchronization of your activities beyond the most recent 25, you need to purchase a PRO subscription for a small £10/year fee on VV. With all the data, analytics, and insights this site is providing above Strava, it’s a great deal, so consider supporting the site that started Tiling.

How should I plan a route?

To maximize the number of tiles collected during a trip, you will need to extend your usual route planning application to show captured and missing tiles. The most versatile solution is the Squadrats Chrome Extension, which works with all popular route planners. Once installed, you’ll have an overlay grid with the tiles that will be captured with the route you’re planning. I found Komoot to be the most comfortable tool to plan the route, but Strava or Ride with GPS are also perfectly fine alternatives.

If you have a particularly tricky routing choice and want to use all available information to confirm how cyclable it is, verify the location in Nakarte. This is a more complex tool, but it allows you to use various map and satellite providers, together with multiple street view services above Google’s. The only better thing to check how a route looks like in reality is to actually go there.

When drawing your route, aim for the corners of tiles, trying to use short road segments that go across three or even four of them, minimizing the travel needed to bag the tiles. For further trips, consider taking the train instead of a car, which is not just the more environmentally friendly option, but allows you to end your trip in a different place from where you started. Not having to route back to the start often allows you to collect more tiles per distance than otherwise.

What is the best gear for Tiling?

The best gear to start tiling is whatever you currently have. Even if it’s just your two legs, you can start discovering nearby missing tiles. However, having a versatile bicycle makes tiling easier and allows you to collect more tiles in one ride. Depending on where you live, this could mean anything between a mountain bike and a road bike. I’m tiling with a gravel one because while most of my routes are paved, being able to go offroad means I can cover a wide variety of terrains in the same trip. Whatever bike you have, make sure your cycling shoes are fairly comfortable to walk in, as you’ll probably need to push the bike or leave it behind in less accessible areas.

Besides regular bike touring accessories, consider purchasing a lightweight café lock that can give you peace of mind if you need to leave your bike behind to collect a tile with no cyclable access route. Finally, mounting your phone to the handlebar of your bike or using a dedicated bike computer makes navigating and confirming if you collected a tile much easier. I have good experience with Quad Lock mounts and the Garmin Edge Explore 2.

What can I use to navigate out there?

All the routing apps above have mobile versions and can sync to bike computers, so you can follow the route you’ve planned easily. I usually print out my plan from Nakarte with the missing tiles layer from VeloViewer, so I can cross out tiles with a pencil as I collect them. This is especially useful when I need to improvise on the spot because the route I planned turns out to be inaccessible, so I don't need to remember which tiles I already have in my bag.

If you’re using a Garmin bike computer, installing the EveryTile ConnectIQ app allows you to see the tiles collected during a ride. It requires a little setup to add your missing areas too, but once done, I found this to be the best way to ensure I haven’t missed a tile by a few meters.

Where else can I read about Tiling?

Here’s a small list of articles, forums, blog posts, and tools you can follow to dig deeper into Tiling:

Who made this site?

I’m Péter Szász, I started Tiling in March 2017, when I was looking for a new purpose for cycling. I tried to explain this game numerous times to friends and colleagues, so I figured it was better to just create this page instead. I recently completed my 40x40 max square, which was an achievement I’ve been working on for years after the 35x35. I wanted to celebrate this with the launch of whatistiling.com.

This site is hosted on GitHub, please feel free to contribute if you think something is missing or wrong.
Thanks to everyone who already added to it.