As my going fast days are over (see health posts) am returning back to audax and touring of my youth. The Enigma now has mudguards and carrier and appropriate gearing inc 34 rear sprocket and the SRM has been removed.
Need HR (health reasons not to try to see how high I can get it)
Want maps.
Have been known to throw misbehaving IT kit at walls.
Ideas ?
Thanks
I've been really pleased with a Garmin Montana. It's big and bulky. That means you get a nice big screen so you can put a big map on it. It also means it's not very aerodynamic, but if your going fast days are over the chances are you're much like me (I'm not very aerodynamic, so don't care that my Montana is bulkier than an Edge).
Whatever unit you go for, mapping involves tradeoffs. You can go for something like OS maps which look pretty but may not offer any useful routing. Garmin's own maps offer routing which is usually quite useful but the maps are usually out of date by the time you've got the package home (how badly out of date and where will depend on where you live).
Some interesting experiences I had with different types of mapping:
Garmin maps typically didn't have very many of the assorted bike lane contraflows/cut-throughts/shared paths that make cycling so much faster. Where I lived in London there were several of them, and my Garmin maps knew of precisely none of them. So it would route me by road to get where I was going, typically making my journeys longer by anything up to a couple of miles.
Garmin Topo maps will often show footpaths and bridlepaths but not regard them as valid routes. If you try and navigate to a point not on a recognised route it will get you as close as it can, then draw a straight line from that point to your destination. I learned that when I tried to navigate to a point on the footpath/cyclepath between Kingston and Hampton Court. My GPS dutifully routed me as close as it could by road, then invited me to go off-road for the last 100 yards or so. Which wasn't as easy as it sounds, because there was some water in the way. Specifically my target was on the north bank of the Thames, and I was standing on the south bank looking at where I needed to be.
Garmin maps also had a tendency to avoid busy main roads. Which was nice, until I was riding on a moderately busy road with a reasonable cyclepath and it tried to get me to turn right across the traffic so I could follow a parallel road for half a mile, then turn right across the traffic again to get back onto the same road.
OS maps are very nice to look at but you may struggle with zoom levels. If you zoom in close enough to see the paths you're walking/cycling you may find you're zoomed in so far you can't see the bigger picture of where you're going.
OSM tried to route me along a "bridlepath" where the path of earth visible was about six inches wide, there were six foot high stinging nettles along both sides, and the path was obstructed by six-foot high metal barriers to make it difficult to get a bike through. The "No Cycling" sign was also rather offputting.
OSM offered me a route along a bridlepath that would have cut a huge distance from my journey, but when the bridlepath was essentially lots of standing water over several inches of wet mud I decided to find a better route. Even on a mountain bike I wouldn't have taken that bridlepath.
OSM offered me a route home. The best option from where I was would have been to follow the road I was on for about a mile and turn right. OSM offered me a 9-mile route that took in some of the busiest roads in the area.
What I personally did was load OSM maps (which are nice and free) onto my unit, then navigate by tracing a GPX of the route and following it. The biggest downside of doing that is that the unit doesn't beep if you miss a turning, nor does it do anything to route you back to where you want to be. The crucial thing is to know the limitations of what you're dealing with and work within it. I went for OSM because I wanted the many paths and bridlepaths (I also use it for hiking and when I bought it I did geocaching too, so the tiny little paths were really useful). If you'd rather not deal with endless bridlepaths you might be better off with Garmin's mapping products, just look at the maps on their web site to make sure the area you want to use them isn't too badly affected by new roads not shown on old maps.
