Following long distance cycle routes

The long distance cycle network (see www.opencyclemap.org) is the first thing to consider when planning a cycle trip. BRouter can do that, and the trekking profile makes use of it. It does that implicitly by just making them cheap in the cost-function, so that the routing sometimes snaps in to long distance cycle routes.

That’s a good choice for long distance cycling, because these routes are a safe harbor almost free of bad surprises. However, when really looking for the optimal route between A and B to use it more than once (e.g. your daily commute) you may want to ignore the long-distance network, to put more focus on hard-facts like distance, hills and surface quality (use the trekking-ignore-cr profile for that purpose).