How it is built
Where Halta’s data comes from.
Halta aggregates 33 086 places to sleep from three open sources, then matches them to 74 routes by measuring distance to the track itself. This page says how, with what limits, and as of when — so that every figure published elsewhere on the site can be checked here.
By Paul Sokol · Updated 17 September 2026 · The same figures in JSON
The sources
Three open inventories, queried separately, then merged and de-duplicated. 71 477 raw records yield 33 086 places kept: the gap comes from duplicates between sources and from entries without usable coordinates.
| Source | Records | What it brings |
|---|---|---|
| refuges.info | 4 863 | Staffed huts, unstaffed cabins, mountain shelters |
| DATAtourisme | 41 865 | Campsites and accommodation declared by tourist boards |
| OpenStreetMap | 24 749 | Campsites, shelters and hotels mapped by contributors |
All three are under the ODbL licence or a compatible one, so they can be redistributed. The merged result is published as-is in the public repository psklrd/halta-data: nothing is kept back.
What the inventory contains
33 086 places as of 1 September 2026. The headline figure on the homepage, 30 196, excludes hotels: Halta is built around four ways of sleeping on the road, and the hotel is not one of them. Hotels are still counted on route pages, as a safety net.
| Type | Count | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Campsites | 22 519 | Declared or mapped sites, from municipal to private |
| Bivouac spots | 5 247 | Shelters, unstaffed cabins, tolerated pitches |
| Mountain huts | 2 430 | Staffed and unstaffed huts, mostly in the mountains |
| Hotels | 2 890 | Outside the headline figure, counted on route pages |
| Of which “Accueil Vélo” | 3 886 | Establishments holding the French national cycling label |
The hosts of the Halta community appear in none of these figures. They are private individuals who welcome travellers into their homes; they do not exist in OpenStreetMap and will only be visible after launch.
How a place is matched to a route
A place counts as “on the route” if it lies within 5 km of the track. Across 74 routes, that comes to 15 801 matches. The calculation rests on three rules.
- Distance to the segment, not to the point. Tracks are simplified to 150 points per stage: two consecutive points can be several kilometres apart. Measuring to the nearest point would overstate how far away a place sitting between two points really is.
- A spatial grid index of 0.05° (about 5.5 km in latitude). Without it, matching 33 086 places against 938 stages would take billions of comparisons.
- A 5 km straight-line threshold. It is an order of magnitude, not a road detour. In the app, the detour shown is computed on the real network — and that is the distance that decides how a day ends.
What these figures do not say
- The tracks do not follow the official waymarking. They come from point-to-point route calculation: real roads, but not always the signed route. The gap is clearest on foot — the GR 34 measures 1,086 km here against roughly 2,000 km waymarked.
- Coverage is centred on France. The inventory stops at a rectangle that spills a little into Spain, Italy and Switzerland. Routes that leave it say so on their page, and show no figure.
- A place that exists is not a place that is available. This data describes that a place exists, never its availability or today’s rate.
- Open data ages. A closed campsite can stay on the map for months. The monthly refresh limits the drift without removing it.
Freshness and rebuilds
Two scheduled jobs regenerate the datasets on the first of each month from the original sources; these pages are rebuilt straight afterwards. The dates below are those of the files actually served, not a promise of cadence.
| Dataset | Version | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| Accommodation | 1 September 2026 | 33 086 places, 13 593 of them with a long description |
| Routes | 13 September 2026 | 74 tracks, 938 stages, 33 204 km |
| These pages | 17 September 2026 | Rebuilt whenever either dataset above is updated |
Frequently asked questions
Where does Halta’s accommodation data come from?
Halta’s 33 086 places come from three open sources: refuges.info, DATAtourisme and OpenStreetMap via Overpass. No manual entry, no commercial partnership: everything is redistributable under the ODbL licence and refreshed monthly.
How does Halta know a place is on my route?
Halta measures the distance between the place and the nearest segment of the track, not the nearest waypoint. Because tracks are simplified, two consecutive points can be kilometres apart, so measuring to the point would overstate the distance.
Why 5 km and not 10?
Five kilometres is the detour a loaded traveller will accept at the end of a day without rearranging the stage. Beyond that, the place is no longer on the route but beside it. That threshold yields 15 801 matches across 74 routes.
Is Halta’s data up to date?
The accommodation inventory dates from 1 September 2026 and the routes from 13 September 2026. Two scheduled jobs regenerate them on the first of each month from the original sources, and these pages are rebuilt straight afterwards.
Accommodation: OpenStreetMap, refuges.info and DATAtourisme (ODbL). Indicative stages computed with OpenRouteService from France Vélo Tourisme and EuroVelo data (ODbL).