GPS Route Planning and Navigation

HappySausages

Hi all.

Later this year I'm going to be riding through Austria, Germany, a bit of Belgium, a bit of Holland, a bit of France and a fair bit of England. I'll be on my own on the bike, but supported by some friends / family in a car driving off ahead following the same route. I won't know the roads and won't be able to afford to get lost. This is for charity, and I hope to complete approx 1200 miles in 14 days.

I'm planning the route using various web based route planners and saving each leg of the journey in Strava so that I can export the route via GPX or similar file type for use on GPS devices, but this is where I would like some advice.

Ideally I want to be able to download the route on to the device and have it mounted on my stem to use as a turn by turn sat nav.

Has anyone got any experience that they could share with this and advice on a decent GPS unit that I could look into in greater detail?

Cheers,

Chris.

DiscoBoy

Garmin are the daddies. The 800, 810, touring and touring plus models will all do what you want.

Mio also make bike gps systems. In my opinion they aren't as good, but they are cheaper

How Far is too Far

Used my Garmin 800 for in Italy/France/Switz and UK for route planning no problem. Mine only has UK mapping but when out of the UK you still get a line to follow which was easy enough. You might be better with full EU road mapping if you want the most info you can get for your route.

I used biketoaster for my route planning until it stopped working, I now use Strava with no problems.

HappySausages

Thanks both for your replies. I'll check out the Garmin range in some more detail. EU Maps would be worth having I think.

DiscoBoy

HappySausages wrote:

Thanks both for your replies. I'll check out the Garmin range in some more detail. EU Maps would be worth having I think.

I've never looked into it myself, but the "oft quoted wisdom" is not to buy garmin's own maps and instead to use those which are freely available and just as good. I can't recall the name, but they shouldn't be hard to find.

dun247

My two cents is the Garmin. If you have a support car and they have a laptop with 3G they can send you routes as you are going along. Their 'Hotfix' GPS is superior to MIO's.
Good Luck in your prep and for you ride days.

apreading

Garmin, no doubt. The Free maps that we all raved about were on Talkytoaster though and he is charging for the best ones now. They were also UK maps only - you had to go elsewhere for other countries which werent as good I think. For a fee, I think Talktoaster would build another country maps for you, but if paying you may as well keep it simple and get the Garmin maps - I got mine for £25 on a card from Amazon but they are usually around £50 there now. Might be best to get a bundle which includes all Europe maps.

meanredspider

apreading wrote:

Garmin, no doubt. The Free maps that we all raved about were on Talkytoaster though and he is charging for the best ones now. They were also UK maps only - you had to go elsewhere for other countries which werent as good I think. For a fee, I think Talktoaster would build another country maps for you, but if paying you may as well keep it simple and get the Garmin maps - I got mine for £25 on a card from Amazon but they are usually around £50 there now. Might be best to get a bundle which includes all Europe maps.

There's lots of very good European free maps. Go to DC Rainmaker's review of the Garmin 810 to see instructions on how to download these routeable maps free. In fact, read his very informative review of the Garmin and comparisons with other GPS devices. I recently downloaded the maps for Holland and they've been perfect. All you need to buy is a good-sized micro SD card.

HappySausages

dun247 wrote:

My two cents is the Garmin. If you have a support car and they have a laptop with 3G they can send you routes as you are going along. Their 'Hotfix' GPS is superior to MIO's.
Good Luck in your prep and for you ride days.

Thanks.

HappySausages

Thanks to all. Some very useful information. I'll have a look at the DC Rainmaker review and free routeable maps.

freezing77

HappySausages wrote:

Thanks to all. Some very useful information. I'll have a look at the DC Rainmaker review and free routeable maps.

The source of the talkytoaster and other free routable maps is here, http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/

I and or my friends have used these maps in the uk, italy, sicily, spain, portugal, france and germany without any issues.