Route Planning Tool

How do you plan your itinerary for your upcoming trip?  Do you use Google Maps to calculate the distance and then add it manually into a spreadsheet?

I generally create a spreadsheet which includes date, departure town, arrival town, distance and a notes section.  I have also been using a spreadsheet created by Francois Visagie which allows for multi-currency itinerary planning and budget planning.

My biggest frustration is calculating the distance between two towns... it's easy enough to do with Google Maps but just time consuming when working out an itinerary.

I began to ponder... what if there was a spreadsheet which could do that automatically for me?  A quick search on Google revealed the answer...

 A Google Map distance calculator has been created by Winfred van Kuijk.

The spreadsheet uses Google Docs (Google username required) to link to Google maps and will calculate the distance between two cities.  It allows you to add to a trip log, which you could copy to your favourite tip planning tool.

It has a few limitations which is primarily around the route planning.  It presumes, via Google Maps, that you always want to do the quickest and shortest route, rather than an alternative route.  The work-a-round is to create more 'hops' between the smaller towns.

My tips on using the spreadsheet:
Create a copy of the template to your Google Docs account.

Distance Calculator - Settings

First change the settings for your region i.e. country code and units.
Be very specific of your address i.e. Nata, Botswana

Let me know if you think its useful...

Overland Trip Budget Planner

How do you budget for an overland trip?  That's a tricky question to answer and a question that majority of overland trips don't event attempt to answer.  Nick from Langebaan Sunset attempted to provide a full years worth of budgeting from his recent UK to SA trip.  It is worth visiting his website to get an insight into the costs.

Budgeting and planning is often the most important aspect of any trip, however, the multiple countries and currencies often play havoc on budget planning.  Francois, a member of the Overland Forum, kindly created this spreadsheet which allows for multiple countries and currencies to be integrated into a budget.  It's a fantastic tool which will be very useful for planning.

Here is the link to the Google Group page and the link to download a copy: Overland Forum - Overland Trip Planner.