Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => The Knowledge => GPS => Topic started by: BarryS on 03 September, 2012, 05:32:40 pm
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I am planning to follow the Raid Pyrenee 100hr route, west to east, using torn up Michelin atlas pages as normal for navigation.
But I also have an Etrex Legend HCX, can anyone suggest (or supply) the best map data to use as a supplement or indeed primary. I think it may be useful to confirm I am still on route, as one col wrong would blow my chances. I guess that Garmin data would be the default, but is there a better or cheaper option?
Barry
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Take a look at http://www.openstreetmap.org/ and see how complete the data is. If it matches your road atlas, download a recent gmapsupp.img of France and get plotting. It's free.
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On the recommendation from someone OTP I recently downloaded a map of France for cycling in the Vosges region. It had all of the roads on that we chose to use, some of which were pretty small, so I thought the coverage was pretty good. Of course that does not mean it will have the equivalent coverage in other parts of France. This is it:
http://mapas.alternativaslibres.es/downloads.php (http://mapas.alternativaslibres.es/downloads.php)
Remember that you can only have one basemap on a Legend at anyone time, I believe (please someone correct me if I am wrong!) that has to be called gmapsupp.img I now use a selection of memory cards to have maps of different countries with me if needed.
If it were me and I had the route in advance I would plot it as a track or something in bikehike.co.uk and put it on my garmin to follow, with some strategically plotted waypoints or something in case I got lost.....
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thanks ,
I will take a look at both those suggestions
Barry
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I did the raid on an organised trip and have the set of track logs that were were provided with. Let me know if you want them. They go to the hotels where the hotels were, but has all the main cols and the twists and turns.
BB
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Thanks for the offer, but I have done the OSM thing above for map data, and found tracks for the whole thing on Bikely,
So I think I am sorted - well I'm going to find out next Saturday morning.... eeek!
Barry
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Well that was hard, but very satisfying (Raid = 85hrs)
The OSM data for France was very effective, in fact close to invaluable at times for finding well hidden hotels in the dark.
The tracks probably weren't needed for this route, I think very little chance of going up the wrong col, but worth having for the bits near to each coast.
So overall I think a success and well worth the up front effort to assemble the GPS+ data - but if you are reading a GPS forum you might already have worked that out for yourself by now.
Barry (GPS very late adopter)
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Well done!
Would you care to make a guess at the total time saved - in finding hotels easily, and in navigating the bits near the coast without having to put a foot down and check a map?
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That's very sneaky question to answer. I rode with the folded atlas on the bars plus garmin ( I like to get the bigger picture on the atlas so that you can get some sense out of the road signs you see, and then zoomed pretty close on the GPS to follow track). With my eyesight and the small font on the Michelin sheets, I would have realistically had to stop each time I make a turn or check something, so maybe 30 times a day, 2 minutes each time? Sounds unbelievable but perhaps 3.5 hours saved! (of course the stop might be needed for something else as well).
Finished day 2 off Col D'Aspin in the dark, hotel was in a different village than I had directions for (note do not believe those blobs with arrows on booking websites!). Took half an hour to find with phone/GPS - without it who knows (another hour)?
Decided to finish route to Cerbere on fourth evening which meant in the dark, my planned route put me a D road that seemed more like a motorway, Garmin let me reroute onto safer smaller roads, when finding an alternative off the Michelin pages would have been much harder (as this was the point when I discover that the last time I saw my head torch was when I put it down for a moment on the sea wall in Hendaye, at dawn on the Atlantic side) - time saved - maybe none as the reroute was longer I think, so we'll call that quits.
So magic Garmin time = 4.5hours -so around 10% of riding time ...wow.
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Call it 4.5% of your allowed 100 hours - still, makes you think doesn't it?
As you say, some of that 'foot down' time isn't entirely time gained, because your legs are losing out on all those mini-breaks.
Like, if I get a puncture and it takes 20 minutes to get going again, I don't consider that to be time lost - because my legs have had a useful 20 minute rest ...
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4.5% would seem a reasonable amount for time lost due to checking paper maps. It's not just the time spent getting it out, finding the right fold etc, but also putting the foot down, maybe getting something to drink etc which you would otherwise do on the move, and the loss of mometum. It all adds up.
Well done on the raid, BarryS, it's a great thing to do. I got my money's worth and carefully planned every detail including bonking on the Tourmalet, to take 98.5 hours.