What is whereto.bike?

whereto.bike is an open-source platform for building cycling wikis. Each wiki connects you to the routes, events, and riding communities in your city — curated by people who actually ride there. Every photo was taken by someone who was there, every route was ridden by a real person.

More than routes

Routes are the foundation, but a cycling wiki is bigger than that. whereto.bike brings together three things:

Routes — GPS tracks, photos, difficulty ratings, surface types, and local tips for every ride. Anyone can add a route or improve an existing one.
Events — A cycling calendar with group rides, races, festivals, and community events. Organizers can manage their own listings.
Communities — Local cycling groups, clubs, and shops each have their own page with upcoming events, social links, and a description of who they are. Communities are the connective tissue — they organize the events and ride the routes.
Places — Cafes, parks, lookouts, swimming spots, bike shops, water fountains — the things that make a ride worth doing. Anyone can add a place, and the wiki automatically links it to nearby routes.

Like Wikipedia, the wiki gets better as more people participate.

Everything connects

Add a community. Link them to an event. The event already has a route. Now the community page shows a map of where they ride, the calendar fills itself in, and someone browsing routes on a Saturday morning discovers there’s a group ride that starts there every Thursday.

Nobody had to build those connections by hand. The wiki understands the relationships between things — a route that passes a bakery, an event hosted by a club, a community that rides the river path — and surfaces them in the right places at the right time. Add a cafe near a cycling path and it shows up on every route that passes by.

The more people contribute, the richer the picture gets. One person adds a route. Another links it to a group ride. Someone else adds the bakery at the turnaround point. Each piece makes every other piece more useful.

What exists today

ottawabybike.ca is the first city running on whereto.bike. It covers 25+ cycling routes in Ottawa, Canada, with GPS tracks, photos, difficulty ratings, and local knowledge — plus an event calendar and pages for local riding communities.

The Ottawa guide started in 2022 as a personal project by José Albornoz, a cyclist who moved to Ottawa and wanted to find good routes. It grew into a community resource used by riders across the city.

How it’s different

Human-curated. Every route is reviewed by someone who rode it. No algorithmic suggestions.
No accounts required. Browse routes, find events, discover communities — no sign-up wall.
Community-edited. Anyone can contribute routes, photos, events, and local knowledge.
Open data. All content is freely licensed. Take it, use it, build on it.
Free and open. No ads, no paywalls, no business model. The wikis are built and funded by cyclists.

Why this exists

whereto.bike is made with love in Ottawa, Canada. Our goal is simple: get more people on bikes for the first time and grow cycling ridership in every city we reach.

We believe the biggest barrier isn’t fitness or gear — it’s not knowing where to go. A good cycling wiki, built by the communities who actually ride those routes, can be the nudge someone needs to try their first ride.