Navigation pain

[cycleruk]

I have been using Satnavs for many years now to get me to places I want to go. As far as I'm concerned they are a boon. I use them in the car, on the motorbike & now bicycle. I am talking about long journeys or finding destinations that I have not been to before.
No stopping at junctions to check the map or a discussion with the navigator on which exit to take at a roundabout.
I prepare most routes on the PC which allows me to plan and modify as needed.

Operating Satnavs though does take some learning and mistakes will be made. There are numerous videos on Utube and internet Blogs which help.
Some PC planning App's link to Google and roads can be viewed on "Street View" showing road surface condition etc.

There are two main problems with GPS units. Cost and which one to buy ?

[squeaker]

If indeed a gadget with pre-loaded routes is really the only solution, what could people suggest (preferably without breaking the bank)?

S/H MotoG 3 (water resistant, ~£50 off e-bay) + OsmAnd app + route planning in cycle.travel. Works for me, but you might want to add a £10 power bank for long rides...

[Psamathe]

.....
The best way I found learning local lanes when I first moved north was just head out, and turn down a road to see where it went.

My method for learning local lanes was before departure I'd work out a route on computer (e.g. Google Earth/Maps, Apple Maps, whatever). Then I'd ride with my intended route in my head but with my phone recording my track. I'd invariably go wrong but not an issue with local rides. When I got home I'd look over the recorded track and work out where I went wrong and where I actually went.

So I was using a GPS but only to record the track and not (normally) using it to navigate on the ride).

Ian

[100%JR]

These days I use GPS, a Garmin Touring which works fine for me, though not everyone gets on with them.
Before that I preferred to follow a routsheet alongside a map, rather than a map alone. The routesheet could be written in advance, or a few miles at a time with the map in front of you. It needn't be complicated, just something to mark the turns with a shorthand you understand.
Like:
L @ T
3rd R
SO RAB
cont 8 mile to ******
L @ X in town cen
...

This is similar to what I do but it's all in my head.I was a Motorcycle Courier in the early 1990s so maybe this is where I get the knack of being able to memorise routes
My mate thinks it's some kind of Witchcraft He often says "how do you know"!!! when we're out and I make a turn etc "I just do" is my usual reply

[mjr]

The system they have in the NL works well. In a local area each point has a node number. All routes/junctions have signs (i.e. a number) that display the node number that that route you are on will take you to. At every node there is a local map with all the node numbers marked and one that indicates the present node number.

Navigation is then a question of writing down a sequence of node numbers or else consigning the sequence to memory.

E.g. 21, 42, 57, 2, 17 will take you from Den Hague to Rotterdam.

The node number (knooppunt) system has spread to all of Flanders, some of Wallonia (points-nœuds) and recently to nearby parts of France. The closest we can get in the UK is navigating by village names, route numbers and road names. Sometimes it works well: Route 1 to Sandringham, Anmer, Houghton, West Rudham, East Rudham, Station Road, Broomsthorpe Road, Tatterford, Shereford, Fakenham will take you from Lynn to Fakenham within a tenth of a mile of what I'd call the shortest good route.

The difficulties arise in that some routes are non-reversible because of missing signposts or rather eccentric choices of what goes on the signs (the reverse of the above route would be Shereford, Tatterford, Broomsthorpe, towards Coxford, East Rudham, West Rudham, Houghton, Anmer, Sandringham, Route 1 to King's Lynn - but it wouldn't take you back along exactly the same route) or when you want to leave a route along an unsigned turn in the middle of nowhere, but the node system sometimes suffers from those too.

Returning to the OP: I'd print a cue sheet PDF from cycle.travel as a faster backup and put it in a map holder on a bar bag, possibly after cut+pasting it into one long roll and then flattening that to map holder length.

[Cugel]

I can see your point Cugel. But I am sticking to my GPS Thank You.

I am also using my house lights (available at the touch of a switch), my electric kettle and other modern conveniences, taking the easy way out, rather than doing everything from scratch with tinder and matches.

When the lights go out because the privatised lecky has all crumbled into a heap of under-investments; when the shops put up the price of carrots to £72:67 per pound; when fuel for the car is no longer obtainable ..... I will revert to my fine skill sets and somehow survive, employing the solar panels & battery; growing my own; riding the bike instead of pressing the accelerator pedal. I have gradually acquired these abilities (usually the hard way) and prefer them to being a vulnerable babby-man, despite the scars!

Also, I will continue to do my own plumbing, furniture-making and several other tasks that you yourself may presently find inconvenient.

But .... should you be willing to come over 'ere, with something useful to give me (all your spare bikes, perhaps) I might teach you all of these skills so that you can not only survive post-Brexit but also feel the joys of competence at the everyday stuff. On the other hand, I might soon expire of accidental electric shock or eating the wrong wild mushroom.

Cugel

PS How many cliffs (I speak figuratively) has your satnav taken you over so far?

[Cugel]

.....
The best way I found learning local lanes when I first moved north was just head out, and turn down a road to see where it went.

My method for learning local lanes was before departure I'd work out a route on computer (e.g. Google Earth/Maps, Apple Maps, whatever). Then I'd ride with my intended route in my head but with my phone recording my track. I'd invariably go wrong but not an issue with local rides. When I got home I'd look over the recorded track and work out where I went wrong and where I actually went.

So I was using a GPS but only to record the track and not (normally) using it to navigate on the ride).

Ian

I does that too but without the prattle-box. Even at my age (137) I find my memory a good recorder, so that any deviations from the intended ride can be recalled and found on the map. (I accept the map, especially the OS ilk, so not a complete Ludd).

Being a part-time luddite, then, I eschew the phone-thing as well as the satnav. I feel these things to be a slippery slope to the point where all humans are encased in a flying Gleisner robot that enhances their abilities except when it goes wrong, whereupon they die of the same malfunctions that kill the robot. Those who lose their robot die of exposure and starvation, somewhere 'round the back of a hill where no one goes as it's not on the satnav database.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(novel)
tells all concerning the Gleisners and worse (better, if you're a believer in Utopia via Progress).

Cugel, trying to shut Pandora's box.

[meic]

I can see your point Cugel. But I am sticking to my GPS Thank You.

I am also using my house lights (available at the touch of a switch), my electric kettle and other modern conveniences, taking the easy way out, rather than doing everything from scratch with tinder and matches.

When the lights go out because the privatised lecky has all crumbled into a heap of under-investments; when the shops put up the price of carrots to £72:67 per pound; when fuel for the car is no longer obtainable ..... I will revert to my fine skill sets and somehow survive, employing the solar panels & battery; growing my own; riding the bike instead of pressing the accelerator pedal. I have gradually acquired these abilities (usually the hard way) and prefer them to being a vulnerable babby-man, despite the scars!

Also, I will continue to do my own plumbing, furniture-making and several other tasks that you yourself may presently find inconvenient.

But .... should you be willing to come over 'ere, with something useful to give me (all your spare bikes, perhaps) I might teach you all of these skills so that you can not only survive post-Brexit but also feel the joys of competence at the everyday stuff. On the other hand, I might soon expire of accidental electric shock or eating the wrong wild mushroom.

Cugel

PS How many cliffs (I speak figuratively) has your satnav taken you over so far?

I can pick up the old skills again easily enough, I also learned them in my youth and drag them out again occasionally.
I dont normally use Satnav, I normally only use a GPS, it navigates along the tracks that I (or cycletravel) give to it. The time saved day to day by the GPS unit compared to having to play with a map more than compensates for any minor blips it may have thrown at me. Those that I can think of would have obliged me to carry several kgs of IGN maps compared to a single mSD card. Nothing to stop the mapping on the IGN maps being just as incorrect as the mapping on the GPS was.

[pwa]

These days I use GPS, a Garmin Touring which works fine for me, though not everyone gets on with them.
Before that I preferred to follow a routsheet alongside a map, rather than a map alone. The routesheet could be written in advance, or a few miles at a time with the map in front of you. It needn't be complicated, just something to mark the turns with a shorthand you understand.
Like:
L @ T
3rd R
SO RAB
cont 8 mile to ******
L @ X in town cen
...

This is similar to what I do but it's all in my head.I was a Motorcycle Courier in the early 1990s so maybe this is where I get the knack of being able to memorise routes
My mate thinks it's some kind of Witchcraft He often says "how do you know"!!! when we're out and I make a turn etc "I just do" is my usual reply

Back that up with a map stowed away just in case you go off route and you have all you need.

[100%JR]

These days I use GPS, a Garmin Touring which works fine for me, though not everyone gets on with them.
Before that I preferred to follow a routsheet alongside a map, rather than a map alone. The routesheet could be written in advance, or a few miles at a time with the map in front of you. It needn't be complicated, just something to mark the turns with a shorthand you understand.
Like:
L @ T
3rd R
SO RAB
cont 8 mile to ******
L @ X in town cen
...

This is similar to what I do but it's all in my head.I was a Motorcycle Courier in the early 1990s so maybe this is where I get the knack of being able to memorise routes
My mate thinks it's some kind of Witchcraft He often says "how do you know"!!! when we're out and I make a turn etc "I just do" is my usual reply

Back that up with a map stowed away just in case you go off route and you have all you need.

My sentiments exactly

The time saved day to day by the GPS unit compared to having to play with a map more than compensates for any minor blips it may have thrown at me.

But is that what cycling is really about
I'm not a Tourer but more a CC/Weekend/mid-week Cyclist and for me it's about getting out there and just riding the lanes/countryside.If I make a wrong turn(rarely) I just go with it and get back on track at the next junction Having a little computer telling me I'm wrong seems to be the thin end of the wedge to me.I know If I'm wrong and I'd rather make up my own mind whether to correct myself now or later thank you very much

[meic]

Its what my cycling navigation is about. Normally getting from A to B along the best possible pathway, sometimes just a well chosen ride.
The GPS doesnt tell me I am wrong it just tells me where I am and where I said I wanted to be.
I often take a different line to that which I put in it before departing and I often put no line in before departing and I sometimes leave the GPS at home.

[cycleruk]

Obviously if you know where your going and how you want to get there then a Satnav is not needed.
But my Garmin came in very useful when in Majorca, where obviously I don't know the roads, and also on LeJog earlier this year. We took many side roads and cycleways with the cycleways not being shown on normal maps.
I still use the Garmin on my local roads but only in GPS mode to record the details of the ride.

[mjr]

But is that what cycling is really about
I'm not a Tourer but more a CC/Weekend/mid-week Cyclist and for me it's about getting out there and just riding the lanes/countryside.If I make a wrong turn(rarely) I just go with it and get back on track at the next junction

Out here where roads are fairly sparse and far between, that can easily leave you turning right twice across a busy A road of theoretically-60-actually-80+ mph motor traffic. That's really not what cycling is about! GPS is a boon for avoiding such unpleasantness.

[PH]

The GPS pros and cons debate will run on and on. It's the device that's meant to be the tool not the rider. You can use it in addition to whatever else you do, or instead of, your choice. Because I have a route plotted doesn't mean I can't go off and explore something else, it makes me more likely to do so. It's not my master.

[pwa]

I've never used a bike GPS, so how quick and easy is it to cobble together a route and get it onto your device? Is it easy to learn? I'm not thinking of getting one, but I'm curious.

My hand-held Satmap is okay for walking, but it simply shows you where you are on an OS map of your choice. So you are reading a map, but with the advantage of having your current position indicated. And the map you see is less visible in sunlight, and liable to result in a crash if you try to use it while cycling. I still prefer to also carry a paper map when I am walking in unfamiliar territory because I can look at a wider area and see how the bit I'm on fits into the wider network of paths and lanes.