maps for expedition touring

[molzor]

hello, im the the process of planning a very long bike trip. 5000miles approx.

how on earth do you deal with maps for such a journey. i cant buy one for every few hundred miles. id have to fill all my bags with just maps.

i have a road atlas which covers all of euope but it only shows motorways at this sort of scale.

anyone got any tips? wing it? follow a compass?

[randonneur]

Download the map.me app and load the countries required. Works fine off line down to street level.

[psmiffy]

Download the map.me app and load the countries required. Works fine off line down to street level.

Does anyone actually do it like that? Ive found Maps.me great for finding the junction of Rue du Rene Artois
and Gruber Strasse when Im looking for a particular shop but pretty useless for finding my way over more than a couple of km

If you are going to use maps just buy them as you go along - preferably before you have finished with the one you are on - if unlike me you have good discipline and throw them away or post them home when you have finished with them it is not a problem

[Tigerbiten]

I use an Android tablet to connect to the internet so I can plot a 3-4 day stretch on Google maps.
For day to day use, I have a Garmin with a pan-Europe map.

If you want to stick to paper maps then I find the 1:250,000 scale (4 inches to the mile) works best for long distance tours.

The again if I'm following a coast/river, an easily followed geographical feature, or a well signposted long distance path then I do tend to wing it a bit as it's hard to get lost .......

[psmiffy]

I use an Android tablet to connect to the internet so I can plot a 3-4 day stretch on Google maps.
For day to day use, I have a Garmin with a pan-Europe map.

If you want to stick to paper maps then I find the 1:250,000 scale (4 inches to the mile) works best for long distance tours.

The again if I'm following a coast/river, an easily followed geographical feature, or a well signposted long distance path then I do tend to wing it a bit as it's hard to get lost .......

This is pretty much how I go about it - except I would only use the tablet for finding a campsite in the evening

[foxyrider]

I use the orange Michelin maps for wider areas, what else I use will depend on the form of my trip. If you are doing mostly a to b riding it's usually easy enough to wing it providing you know the towns you want to pass through. (a simple list can be used as a reminder)

The other thing I do is use road atlases - they are cheap and if you buy the right ones offer plenty of detail and are cheap enough to abandon when you're done.

[Sweep]

This is pretty much how I go about it - except I would only use the tablet for finding a campsite in the evening

Don't you use a smartphone for that, psmiffy, to avoid having to find free wifi?

Please note, i am not being critical - it's an open question.

Interesting thread by the way, thanks OP.

[psmiffy]

[Sweep]

Download the map.me app and load the countries required. Works fine off line down to street level.

I've been experimenting with a few android offline mapping apps and really like the look of map.me. is there any of that app you have to pay for or is it entirely free?

So far I find it way superior to google maps offline which for some reason best known to their marketing people (it surely can't be a technical imperative?) Forces you to download everything again every few weeks. Sod that.

[Sweep]

Capture.JPG

I know a pic is supposedly worth a thousand words, but in rather less, what is that psmiffy?

[tatanab]

Is this a one way trip, out and back, or a loop? This could influence the answer. Where? This too will change the response.

My longest trips tend to be about 1500 miles in a loop, and all have been in western Europe. My favoured scale of 1:100,000 means that I sometimes carry 1kg in maps. I could mail some home but never get around to it. I think if I was looking at a 5000 mile trip in western Europe I would use 1:250,000 as suggested above which can be bought in many places, even supermarkets. Then if I wanted to explore locally I would buy a different scale map. Maps can be discarded or mailed home unless they are needed again later in the trip.

On tour I use maps because I want to see a big picture. I use GPS etc to find campsites, shops etc as needed. I would not use an electronic map (GPS/Google maps etc) to ride on because I like to see that big picture since it influences where I ride hour by hour - I do not follow pre planned routes, just have a good idea where I am aiming on the day and make up the detail on the road.

Compass - last year I met a young chap who was riding to an event in Spain. He had a single sheet map of France and Spain so that he had big place names to orientate himself, but he said he just rode on the compass heading south. If a road went south and looked pleasant he used it.

[psmiffy]

Capture.JPG

I know a pic is supposedly worth a thousand words, but in rather less, what is that psmiffy?

It worked in preview so I assumed it worked in reality

Edit - it now seems to have worked in in both alternative reality and this reality -

[molzor]

well the trip is first across europe to turkey, then onwards into asia. im not sure how far/long itll be yet. im just allocating up to 5 months to see how far i can get.

I have used the winging it technique in the past in france and spain. looking for a town in the right direction for the day and following a compass.it worked pretty well. but i feel like you cant really go too wrong there. theres always local shops and running taps everywhere.
the same did not at all work in norway, in the fjords, where just heading south is not as option as you have to go allllll the way around the water and head north before going south.

i do have a garmin touring, which covers europe and does pretty well. it will guide you the right away once set up, but the map on it doesnt have any info at all so if you only use that you really are just trusting it, and it has a tendancy to try take you down paths which are more hiking trails than cycle routes

[Psamathe]

This is pretty much how I go about it - except I would only use the tablet for finding a campsite in the evening

Don't you use a smartphone for that, psmiffy, to avoid having to find free wifi?

Please note, i am not being critical - it's an open question.
...

I would suspect that most people would use a mapping app that allows you to pre-download selected map areas in advance to avoid the need for any internet i.e. neither Wi-Fi not GSM data. On my smartphone I have pre downloaded the entire UK (which takes up insignificant space on the phone) which enables me to use the mapping as much as I like without any data connection.

So I'd expect people would pre-download the mapping for most of the areas they intended to tour around and thus not need to be online for looking at the maps.

Such apps are also available for most tablets as well (certainly Apple and Android based ones).

Ian

[Psamathe]

I use the orange Michelin maps for wider areas, what else I use will depend on the form of my trip. If you are doing mostly a to b riding it's usually easy enough to wing it providing you know the towns you want to pass through. (a simple list can be used as a reminder)
.....

(I've no experience on this, so it's a "I wonder" question), when you "wing-it" is there not a risk that you end-up on roads somewhat busier than you would wish for (e.g. following sign posts, etc.).

Ian