Seeing the trail as a marked bicycle route in OSM I ventured on it and got greatly disappointed when I eventually had to push my bike along a narrow footpath in the wood. Looking at the RMK website I only see this trail described as a made for hiking.
In my opinion the bicycle route should be deleted from OSM altogether. There are also several other RMK bicycle routes in OSM. I don’t want to delete any without consulting the local community, though. What is your opinion?
I think it should be removed. I know some people with higher than average skill do hiking routes on mountain bikes, but it doesn’t mean that we should mark each hiking route as a cycling route.
@UrSuS, maybe you could shed a light why it was added as such. Maybe RMK listed it also as a cycling route.
I have bikepacked through two of them and while I agree that RMK national hiking paths are not exactly cycling paths there is still a reason to keep cycle relation at hand. The reason is that RMK specifically provides main hiking path and cycle alternative paths for harder sections of the hiking trail. Because of those alternative cycle routes the national hiking trails are acceptable for cycling too. In my opinion cycle relation of these hiking trails just have to be updated to represent main + alternative sections that deviate from main route while the hiking relation should be the original hiking route. This fact is acknowledged on RMK hiking trails pages and they even provide alternative routes with maps. The only and only national hiking trail that absolutely must not have a cycle relation is the hiking trail around Hiiumaa which lierally goes through the sea at some point and is totally advised to be hiked by foot by RMK itself on the trail page.
Now that you mention it I see that the pdf map on the RMK website contains the additional biking trails. It’s only written in Estonian, though. That’s why I did not understand that beforehand.
I agree then that the OSM bicycle routes should not be deleted but they should be changed to reflect the alternative sections as Apirnus suggested.
Interestingly, the section that I stumbled upon does not have an alternative way marked. But that is something I may need to take up with RMK then.
Not all sections have alternative routes as you saw. Only the most hardest have alternative routes. For example bog sections where you have literally two wooden planks and good luck passing it on the bike. Doable but most definitely not exactly enjoyable long walk with deer flies, moskitos and deer keds along with massive risk of damaging rear deraileur. Talking from numerous first hand experiences… Hence the alternative sections.
However, many sections are still doable on a bicycle despite it not looking like a cycleable part. That happened to me thrice on two trails. Two of them because some other factor was at play like forest clear cut or forest fire fighting. Only single time so far was where path was as you described and it was before Soomaa on Oandu-Ikla trail. I got there a lot of chantarelles instead of disappointment and just cooked some great meal after passing that narrow forest path which I just cycled through anyway. But lots of times I had to divert the trail not because the path was not exactly uncycleable but because some parts of the trail were not serviced for some long time and it was overgrowing with nature. Wouldn’t even go by foot through such sections. Hence the description of trails by RMK that those trails are not exactly cycling trails, doable yes with alternative sections, great chat starter and prolonger later on but that does not mean that they are not passable by bicycle at all or that they are advised to not cycle on. That is left to the hikers themselves to decide what is doable and what is not.