Lee’s idea does work, but it’s a tedious process tracing over the route.
I uploaded a ‘track’ of a ‘route’ and then downloaded its associated maps:
I then proceeded to trace over a section, to create (as Lee suggested should happen) a ‘route’:
I am using an iPad and learning on the job as it were, reordering the points in the list as I went along to force the route to follow the track. The problem, on first use, is that the app chooses how to go from point to point, meaning that you really do have to force it along. That said, there may be something in a settings menu (I haven’t looked) which resolves that problem.
Conclusions, from a brief trial run
1, Lee’s suggestion does work.
2. It’s clunky and time consuming. However, this might improve with familiarity and / or perhaps using it on a PC, though a big iPad is pretty powerful these days.
3. It’s a method that’s probably best on easy A to B routes. But, if so, you might as well go straight into Google Maps and create it there.
4. Would I spend time tracing over a complex track? No. I’d use BaseCamp or MyRoute, whose tracing abilities are much better….. or I’d get someone else to do it…. Or better still, I’d use BaseCamp or MyRoute’s ability to convert a ‘track’ into a ‘route’ at the touch of a button.
5. I think the basic problem is that the app is not really designed around ‘vehicle’ or for ‘on-the-highway’ use for GPS guided navigation of third party ‘routes’. In short, we are probably forcing the app to do something it’s not best suited to.
6. Point 5, might well explain why app developers charge a very modest fee to allow ‘navigation’. It probably takes some considerable developing and then support. MyRoute have years of experience of it through Tyre, but still went through a very big (it’s still going on) development of their very good ‘Navigation’ app. The people who could perhaps turn it on fastest is maybe Google, by allowing navigable routes to be transferred from Google My Maps into Google Maps. But, for whatever reason(s) they refuse and nobody seems able to hack it.