Converting Google POIs to Garmin POIs/Waypoints

[Auntie Helen]

Hi folks,

I'm now in Germany and thinking about embarking upon my challenge for this year which is to visit all the churches in the borough of Viersen (I have found 112 so far on the map/internet).

I have conveniently made a Google Map of these: https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zy_0KHlNFh70.k3R_awnvgbPs

They are all over the place and it's quite likely I will cycle past one without realising, or will go within 100 metres or so. I realised that if I had the waypoints/POIs on my Garmin I'd notice them when out cycling and could bag a couple of extras here or there.

The aim is not to attend a service, just to cycle there, photograph it, maybe read up a little about the church, and so on. This gives me a goal for my year and a reason to cycle all over my new home borough.

Delthebike had the helpful suggestion that I cycle to all the churches, then mark them as waypoints. I rather hoped there might be another way to convert from these to a Garmin file. Does anyone have any ideas?

[Vince]

If you can get a list of the lat and lon of each church, creating a GPX file of the waypoints is relatively easy. Getting the base data is the niggle.

[Auntie Helen]

I will have to see if Google will do a Lat/Long export. They do do a KML export, not that that's much use to me.

[Vince]

Your Google PoIs aren't correct.
You have St Georg Oberamern as being on Dorfstraße, but on OSM I find it at An St Georg, about 300 metres to the south.

[Auntie Helen]

Some of them have been done by me looking at a printed map, finding the little church symbol and then trying to find exactly where it goes on the map. Some others have been looking at their websites. Sometimes the church has an office which is down the road from the church so I might sometimes have got these as the church, although generally the church ought to be vaguely noticeable in a standard German town/village as the tallest point.

I am glad to see you are checking my work!

[Vince]

If you put the address into openstreetmap.org search, it will return the lat and log. If you can create a table of those with any names, descriptions etc, I can create the GPX for you.
(Started doing it myself but realised it's actually more boring doing that than what I'm supposed to be doing!)

[Auntie Helen]

That's a good plan! I, too, am procrastinating about work so need to try to apply myself (have done very little work in two weeks, not good for a freelancer!), but will work my way through the list over the next few days with lat & long. I assume an Excel Spreadsheet is suitable?

[fuaran]

Export a KML file from Google Maps. Then you can open that in BaseCamp, and load the points onto a Garmin.
Or you could use GPSBabel to convert from KML to GPX.

[Auntie Helen]

I have the KML export but I don't have Basecamp (I'm a Mac user).

[fuaran]

There is a Mac version of BaseCamp or GPSBabel.
Or if you want an online convertor, try this: http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/convert_input

[Auntie Helen]

It worked! Thanks so much Fuaran!!!!

And thanks to Vince for having a look at doing it via co-ordinates.

I now have a colossally-long list of waypoints on my Garmin but they show on the map which is the really useful helpful thing.

Now to make the Garmin mount on my Velomobile work a bit better so I can see the screen when it's sunny.

Oh, and I was talking to a German lady yesterday about my bike and it turns out Germans pronounce Garmin as Jarmin as they think that's how we do it!