Sat navs

[Stepdoug]

cheers for the reply s.
Now bought a TomTom 550. So a good update from an 06 purchased V2. Don't always use the satnav but handy at times
And as I've had one since 06 seems strange not to have it.

[Mister Fishfinger]

I never had a sat nav on a bike until this year, when I bought a used Garmin Zumo 350LM off eBay for my trip to deepest rural Wales.

In all honesty I absolutely hate the bloody thing. It's slow to respond, the user interface looks like something from the 90s and the associated BaseCamp route planning software for the PC is hilariously awful.

The worst thing for me though - tracks. I bought it because I wanted something that would take me along a fixed route, which is what you want when you are touring on a bike. You want to go a certain way on the twisty roads, not the shortest / fastest route like a truck driver would. I found out rather too late that you can import a GPX file which defines the route you want to take but the Garmin just takes the start and end points and plans its own route anyway. Apparently there are some Garmin models that can do this, but not mine. And Garmin's website is not at all clear on this feature.

So I am going to bin it and go with Tony Nitrous' suggestion - Quad Lock case and phone. I was thinking about that option before I bought the Garmin and now I am regretting my choice.

Ah....tracks. Yes I just fell foul of that, thinking that the track file tracked the route. Wrong. What the track file does is track the quickest route between waypoints (or the start and finish if there are no waypoints entered). To run the route you entered you need the .gpx file

Tried that Barmy. Created a GPX file, loaded it onto the Garmin. All it does is route from the start point to the end point. I think some of the Garmins will do that, but not mine.