As recovery for my knee operation, I’m slowly starting up some road biking (as mtb is not yet possible). As I’m really bad in orientation, I’ve bought a Garmin Edge 705 GPS (from my oprotpremie :). Although there’s plenty of opportunity for improvement to the device, I find that a GPS tremendously increases bike possibilities. I’ve “acquired” (I leave it up to you to determine what I mean) the Onroute NL bike map, which is currently the only map available that has auto-routing, specific for biking. So you type in your destination and it will navigate you to it over very beautiful bike roads. Like this, you can, without any risk of getting lost, discover unknown routes. And also no need any more to stop at each crossing, as the GPS will notify you before each crossing where to go.
Specifically for Erik, the GPS has a special feature to navigate you to the closest “cold beer” when you’re in desperate need.
I’ve tried it with a trip from Berkel-Enschot to Nijmegen and I was really astonished about the great route it took me over. I can all GPS owners recommend to get this Onroute NL bike map as well. It’s only about 100 MB, so it doesn’t take too much space on your GPS.
Cheers, Erco
I think I am going to try that bike map as well soon. Sounds like a great idea. As for Garmin usability, there are two things on the Garmins that are great which are the display and the robustness. The usability on it is really bad. For one thing, never select ‘avoid highways’ when you have selected bicycle navigation on the city maps because that will give you extreme detours. Perhaps the new touchscreen devices (same robustness) will be better, but then, my current GPS will just not break…..:-)
I usually take the GPS with me when I go cycling. Nothing is more frustrating than sitting for one hour in a car to go somewhere to bike and then lose the route after 15 minutes. I still remember our German mountainbiking weekend in Medebach where Reli was much faster than us, but where we finished almost at the same time because he continuously lost the way. And… we also found the route again using the GPS in Willingen. Otherwise, that too would have become a really frustrating experience.