I like Skol
A Minging Manc...
- Location
- Sunny Ashton-under-Lyne
Well his Garmin will just record his rides as it normally would. It relies on global satellites not maps as everyone else is banging on about. He won't have base maps, but could navigate using it if he needed to. Equally he could just use his smart phone but may be subject to roaming charges although he could pre download Google maps for the area he is visiting, but then he could do that on the Garmin.
Strava App on the phone runs without a network connection. Just start/stop it as normal and it uploads the ride once you get back to a wifi or network connection (usually the free wifi at your hotel?).
Same with my Suunto watch. It will record a ride even if I don't have the linked phone with me and then uploads once back together with my phone. The GPS data is stored by the devices until it becomes uploadable. In the case of my watch, I can look in the ride logs on the watch and see basic info like time elapsed, distance, ave speed, climbing etc so have access to that data even without ever linking the unit to an internet enabled device.