I'm looking at a route from France (near the Pyrenees) into Spain - a route that actually follows one of the old pilgrimage paths to Santiago de Compostela. Sounds like an interesting route to take but what's it really going to be like?

So I mapped it at http://www.mycycletour.com and you can see the route at http://www.mycycletour.com/displayro...RouteNumber=70 . It's pretty good - I can see the map, I can even see some pictures along the way, and I can drop the little man-icon on the map to get a street view image anywhere along the route. But it's still hard to get a sense of the ride. So now I click on the little button "See it in 3D" (just above the map). It takes a second, but it loads the google earth plugin and then plays the route... just like flying in a helicopter along the whole route. Get a cup of coffee (or a glass of wine) as you could be watching for a while. It is absolutely awesome.

Here's an image that I cut and pasted from the tour - on the site you just hit the play button and it flies the route. It works on any route in the system. You can put in your own route then see it. If you can't put the google earth plug-in on your device, then you can download a file and play it in the google earth app.