How to plan a scenic route (and why Google Maps won't help)
Every mainstream sat-nav is built to answer one question: what is the fastest way there? If the drive itself is the point, you are fighting the tool. Here is what actually works.
Why your sat-nav keeps ruining the drive
Google Maps, Apple Maps and Waze optimise for time, full stop. Every recalculation, every "faster route available" banner, every rejoin after a fuel stop pulls you back to the dual carriageway. They are brilliant at commutes and useless at coast roads. The A-road over the moor will never win an argument with an algorithm that only counts minutes.
The workarounds people try (and where they break)
"Avoid motorways" toggle. A blunt instrument. It swaps the M5 for the A38, not for the road through the gorge. It still picks the fastest non-motorway line, which is usually just a slower version of the same boring route.
Dragging the route in Google Maps. Works on a desktop, up to a point: you get a handful of drag points, they vanish if you refresh, and the moment you deviate on the day, navigation recalculates straight back to the fastest line as if your plan never existed.
Pins and My Maps. You can build a lovely custom map in Google My Maps, and then discover it will not give you turn-by-turn navigation at all. It is a picture of a plan, not a plan you can drive.
GPX files and fiddly exports. The enthusiast route: plan in one tool, export a GPX, import into another app, hope it survives. Powerful, but it turns a Sunday drive into an evening of file management.
How to plan a route that is actually scenic
Start with the roads, not the destination. A scenic route is defined by what it goes through. Pick two or three anchor points you actually care about: a pass, a coast road, a village for lunch. Everything else is connective tissue.
Use waypoints to pin the good bits. Put a waypoint on the road itself, the summit of the pass, the middle of the gorge, so the router cannot shortcut around it. This is the single biggest trick: routes through places, not just to them.
Check the honest cost. The scenic option usually costs less time than you fear. Seeing "fastest 1h 40, scenic 2h 05" turns a vague worry into an easy yes. If a tool will not show you both numbers, it is hiding the decision from you.
Plan the stops like they matter, because they do. A great drive has a rhythm: a viewpoint an hour in, lunch at the halfway point, fuel before the empty stretch. Name them as waypoints so navigation carries your day, not just your endpoint.
Make sure it survives contact with reality. Whatever you plan in must navigate the same line on the day, resume after the lunch stop, and not "helpfully" reroute you onto the bypass. If your plan lives in one app and your navigation in another, reality wins and your plan loses.
Or skip all that
This is exactly why we built Scenic Way. It plans through your chosen waypoints, shows the fastest and scenic times side by side, suggests attractions near your route, and then navigates the actual plan, on iPhone and CarPlay, with live traffic and resume-after-lunch built in. Walking, running and cycling get the same treatment.