Complete guide for tile chasing

Are you bored of riding always the same routes? Do you want to explore more? Do you need to find new motivation for your everyday rides? Tile chasing is a great option to add some fun and exploration to your rides.

What is tile chasing?

Strava tiles, also called VeloViewer tiles or simply « cycling tiles », are a division of the world into a grid of 16,384×16,384 squares, each one about a mile wide. The goal of Riding Every Tile is try to visit as many of these tiles as you can, using only human power

https://rideeverytile.com/
Example of map divided into small squares.

On this map you can see all the « tiles ».

What are the targets?

There are 3 ways to be part of the challenge :

  • Maximum number of visited tiles
  • Maximum cluster
  • Maximum square

Maximum number of visited tiles

On this map you can see all the visited tiles (red squares). For each of them I had an activity who crossed the tile (cycling, running, hiking…).

This is the very first challenge you can start with. In some areas, you don’t have the other options (sea, mountains…).

Example of map with visited tiles

Maximum cluster

Example of map with max cluster highlighted (green)

Your Max Explorer Cluster is the largest set of connecting, visited tiles which each have their four immediate neighbouring tiles (above, below, left & right) also visited

It’s a little bit more challenging because it will force you to avoid isolated tiles.

Maximum square

This is the most challenging target.

If the first squares up to 7×7 are quite « easy » to get, the more you grow, the more you will face challenges : impossibles areas, need for better logistic and time, mountains, lakes…

Example of map with a maximum square (blue)

How to get into tile chasing ?

First you need a GPS device: mobile phone with proper application, smart watch, sport watch, bike computer… any of them is fine to start with.

You need a Strava account. All the tile chasing applications are based on Strava. You need to record all your activities into Strava.

A tile chasing application. There are many options :

After loging on one of these applications, you will have access to your stats.

Where do you stand on the leaderboard?

First of all, I think tile chasing is more a personal challenge rather than a collective challenge.

The Ride Every Tiles website was displaying a national leaderboard. It has been down for few weeks.

You can also refer to VeloViewer’s leaderboard.

How to plan a ride and search for un-explored tiles?

If you want to « optimize » your tile chase, you can use Google Chrome add-ons. In fact, the 3 applications mentioned above developed their add-ons to make your life easier. They are working with the most popular route planning tools: Strava, Komoot, Garmin connect…

They can help to spot the missing tiles and optimize your route accordingly.

On this map, Strava route editor + VeloViewer add-on makes clear the already visited tiles and the new tiles.

How to know the new unlocked tiles after a ride ?

Squadrats application provides this very cool feature of highlighting the new unlocked tiles (the green tiles on this example).