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Sat nav v maps

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2 Comments

I used to like the idea of being spontaneous and also did not fancy using a sat nav however once you have tried to get a room somewhere to find you cannot get one as they are full due to a local festival, over priced (Italy circa 2001, 11 pm in a roadside motel style @ €175 comes to mind) , you cannot find one (sounds strange I know but there are miles and miles of nothing in parts of Germany - well apart from excellent scenery) and to book into somewhere and find it awful, we now do as above - i.e. find a final destination and plan route around it. 

We use a combination of Biker Friendly accommodation on www.thebikerguide.co.uk and if there is nothing in the area we want we also look on booking.com.

We did a trip a couple of years ago with the final destination being Colditz Castle, which you can stay in. Went in July for 3 ish weeks with everything booked, set into sat nav and you know what - thank goodness as it rained everyday but one. We would set off with the next place in the sat nav - take off route when we wanted and arrive at destination stress free.

We stayed at some great places, travelled fantastic roads and routes, ate well, found our way easy even with the many roadwork diversions and would pass by others at the side of the road battling with a big wet soggy map to find their way. We did also pack a map as back-up or to look at a vaster area on a larger scale, however we are happy to say it return dry and not soggy. 

I think once you have used a sat nav on a big trip which gets you to destinations easy, gets you out of a diversion and back on route, helps you navigate/find food and petrol, you wonder what you did before the United States military released the technology for GPS!

OK Garmin, Where are we now by Nigel Grace

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Comments

  1. Jim Ish

    Nothing wrong with the road in the photo! They are also on a suitable bike to ride it! Seriously tho' I do agree. Check the map when planning. You don't actually need a paper map to check - use the map function on Garmin sat nav.

    Posted on

  2. BigPhil

    My first driving trip abroad ( car ), was pre sat-nav days and everything we planned out with maps of Europe looked great until we got to road sign's pointing to towns and cities, none of which matched my plan or the towns I was looking for and we ended up getting lost in Brussels. Now I use a sat-nav always but I still use a map to plan the route with the sat-nav, you must remember if your destination or stops comes back towards you from a junction on a motorway or a main road, the sat-nav is unlikely to calculate via that junction but will bring you off before your destination taking you along minor roads and in some cases dirt roads ( depending on make of maps used ), this is probably what has happened in the picture above, had he planned journey using a map as well he would have ignored the instruction to come off the main road.

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