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Why, when I'm plotting a route and put a point a little further along a road does Plotaroute decide to take me on a huge looping detour instead of following the most natural line? It's ridiculous and frustrating. It means I have to plot inumerable extra points along the route to avoid being taken on wild deviations. And I have to check and recheck every step between points in case I miss one of these stupid detours and have my GsD start screaming at me because I 'missed the turn' into the private road around a golf course when all I wanted to do was ride past.

I just plotted a 100 km ride and it did it to me more times than I can count. 

Hi Martyn,

Auto-plot uses OSM data, so when a route takes a detour rather than the most obvious route, it usually means the OSM data doesn't allow for a straightforward route.

When this happens, the immediate solution is to disable auto-plot, but the long-term solution is to check OSM and see whether the data there conflicts with the plotting request (bike: no, for example, or the kind of terrain/street if you check "avoid major roads", etc.).
If so, you can sign up to OSM and improve what might be missing or wrong. More about this here: https://www.plotaroute.com/tip/42/how-to-help-improve-openstreetmap-osm-maps

If there is no obvious conflict, it might either be a recent edit we haven't yet updated on Plotaroute, or it might be an actual bug, which I need to report to the devs.

Could you reach out to me via the help desk with screenshots of a couple of locations where this happened?
This way, we can look into it.

Best regards,
Julien

Hi Martyn and everyone,

I'm just updating this topic to say that we are currently investigating two issues with the auto-plot feature:

The one mentioned here by Martyn showed that by placing the points far from each other, the plotted route may take detours.
At first, it seemed to be connected with the additional settings (for example, avoid unpaved), but even without them, this can happen.
It seems to be specific to the bike auto-plotting.
The workaround for now is either to place points close together or to disable auto-plot.

This second one, mentioned by Roger here showed a situation where OSM data should allow auto-plotting to work (and used to work), but now only works on road setting.
The workaround here is to disable auto-plot.

As soon as I receive any news about those issues, I'll update the forum topics.
All the best,
Julien