Best way to navigate a 50 mile ride...?

[mjr]

Battery packs plug in like a charger. Micro USB for me but Apple have designed their own plug I think. Less efficient but much easier to use than swapping internal batteries.

 

[ClichéGuevara]

Click "go"
Listen to the voices as they tell you where to go.

The judge warned me not to do that. He said he'd put me back in the dark place with the jacket that fastens at the back if I did.

 

[ColinJ]

I am thinking of upgrading to the latest HD version [of Memory Map] which would print better, and can be installed on up to 5 devices, so laptop, desktop, tablet, phone and a compatible GPS. I think there is a discount for registered owners of earlier versions.

I decided to save money and buy the standard version instead. I don't really need to print the maps, and storage space is at a premium on my unexpandable Galaxy Tab. I got a 25% discount as a registered user of an older version.

It took a bit of faffing about to copy the maps to my phone and tablet but they are now working. The new map shows several major road changes which caught me out on the old map. (Two examples: A new road leading to a new industrial estate and motorway junction near Milnrow, and a busy A-road near Nottingham which trashed a quiet country lane which I had intended to ride down.)

I will still use my old Garmin for navigation, but I can now use my phone for backup.

 

[ColinJ]

I like carrying a copy of my forum ride routes on my phone. My old Garmin GPS has not let me down yet, but it does not have maps on it which means that I have to stick to the route I plotted or roads that I know. Having a Landranger-scale OS map of the whole of mainland Britain on my phone is a brilliant backup and will allow me to make up alternative routes out on the road!

I was forced to do a major detour once on a 140 mile ride. Fortunately, I knew a different way back because the diversion sign was a fat lot of good - "Snake Pass closed - please take an alternative route"!

Here is a photo of my laptop, phone, and tablet showing part of the route we took on my forum ride on Saturday ...

The one thing I am not so chuffed about is that the Android app does not allow me to display an elevation profile of a route, the way that I can on my PCs. I thought I would be able to get away with just taking my tablet with me on cycling holidays but I like being able to check the hilliness of new routes before I ride them. I know how contour lines work so I can get an idea from the maps, but a graph makes things much clearer.

 

[briantrumpet]

It's the unfolding and folding that gets to be a right pain, especially in wet and windy conditions. I bought some Dutch Falk maps of the Netherlands at 1:50,000 scale. They are well designed and beautifully clear, specifically designed for cyclists. It just took a few drops of rain to start them falling apart at the seams.

Similarly French IGN maps are lovely new, but I've learned to reinforce all the folds on the rear with masking tape before first use now. OS maps must use a much better 'weave' in their paper, as it is much more resilient to frequent (and damp) refolding.

I'm another map-plan-and-try-to-memorise rider, with some sort of paper map as a back-up, if somewhere unfamiliar, not least as sometimes I like to stop and see where I am and what's around me ... and occasionally take a diversion from the planned route. Maps are both beautiful and an unending source of fascination.

 

[HLaB]

Before I got a Garmin, I just pick a simple route with minimal turns and study it and carry a map just in case and refer to it when I was unsure of a turn and often it'd just be an extension of a previous route; touch wood that worked for me. Now I have a garmin, navigation is a bit faster but I still select a relatively direct/ simple route and I am more likely to plan a route in new territory .

 

[montroseloon]

I use an app on my Android phone called bike hub which allows you to plot a route but also email it to yourself and then use a GPX viewer to open it once it is saved on your phone. Also RichardB if you are thinking of changing phones try a good android phone as the battery life on them is really good compared to the iPhone

 

[RichardB]

Also RichardB if you are thinking of changing phones try a good android phone as the battery life on them is really good compared to the iPhone

Thanks, but ... when my iPhone contract ran out I 'upgraded' to a Samsung phone. I gave it a week and then sold it and dug the iPhone back out of the drawer. I found the interface very fussy and didn't get on with it at all. I'm not really a smartphone person, to be honest. When the iPhone 4 dies, I have two fully-functional Nokia 6310i phones which I intend to bring back into service.

 

[ColinJ]

Ha - I wondered why my phone had been running the battery down more quickly than usual ... I had turned the GPS on to test navigation using my Memory Map app, and I forgot to disable it when I had finished!