How do you navigate?

[mattc]

This thread has reminded me of a few assumptions to avoid in future:

Everyone can afford a GPS and make it work
Everyone can read a routesheet
Everyone knows their left-from-right
Everyone has a dishwasher
Everyone under 45 rides without glasses

I probably missed a few ...

[ceejay]

I still needed a waterproofish way to mount them, so worked out a way to use transparent CD plastic envelopes, hole punched and bound together with cable ties, and trimmed each section of route sheet to fit inside them - I then mounted them using elastic bands that held them bent over the top of my front light -

As a newbie who doesn't own a GPS I'm interested to know how other people mount their routecards.

So far I have improvised a mount from a stiff plastic envelope that was originally a name card holder. It has survived 3 audaxes but I doubt it will survive many more. So - what next?

Actually, now I have re-read bikey mikey's suggestion and realised that he means the soft plactic cases, not the hard boxes (I know, I know, but I was up at 0400 today) I think that will probably do for me but I'm still interested.

[Karla]

As a newbie who doesn't own a GPS I'm interested to know how other people mount their routecards.

So far I have improvised a mount from a stiff plastic envelope that was originally a name card holder. It has survived 3 audaxes but I doubt it will survive many more. So - what next?

Actually, now I have re-read bikey mikey's suggestion and realised that he means the soft plactic cases, not the hard boxes (I know, I know, but I was up at 0400 today) I think that will probably do for me but I'm still interested.

Get a rubber band and strap the routesheet onto your arm.  Make sure it's in a plastic bag so that it doesn't absorb your sweat.  This is the simplest and easiest way to hold a routesheet and doesn't take up space on your bars.  If the route you can just put it in your pocket.

I have a GPS and I use it if the route is complex, long, in unfamiliar territory etc.  If I'm doing hilly km in an area that I know, I don't bother.

[Doosh]

Not an audaxer, but generally I navigate from memory, either places/roads I've been to before or from looking up the route on google maps and memorising it. But just following others is a pretty good way t do it also 

[LEE]

I have difficulty telling the difference between left and right and my brain was trained in Miles. I also have difficulty retaining instructions I have just read.

I thought it was just me.

I can read "R@T" twenty times on the way to the T-Junction but I'll forget it 2 minutes after reading it each time.

I'm hoping good signage and 5,999 other riders will make PBP route easy to navigate without using a route sheet or GPS.

[Greenbank]

GPS.

Routesheet (and sometimes map) in the saddlebag if required.

[Ray 6701]

Routesheet & relevant sections of a road atlas with the route highlighted on 400k+ rides, that's when I'm not being guided by datameister of this parish.  I just can't get on with GPS for some reason or other, I used one on the West & Midlands 400 & ended up just giving up on it & relying on datameister & Denice Noha knowing where we were going 

Edit: I attach my routesheet to my handlebars/stem by using a piece of card covered by a polybag & attached by tiestraps.

[Manotea]

I don't think anybody has mentioned the killer benefit of a GPS; a light up screen you can read at night. I haven't ridden with a head torch for years.

More of an issue for some then others I guess.

Best option is to have the route sheet and GPS on the bars, the route sheet to ride the route as written and the GPS as bike computer/route check in extremis. But come dusk, the routesheet goes in the saddle bag.

[bikey-mikey]

Get a rubber band and strap the routesheet onto your arm.  Make sure it's in a plastic bag so that it doesn't absorb your sweat.  This is the simplest and easiest way to hold a routesheet and doesn't take up space on your bars. 

I tried this method once, but no matter how far I leant back, my arm was still too close to read without reading glasses, even when the font was much bigger and that was when I worked out how to attach to the bars.....

[Martin]

Not an audaxer, but

actually worth moving this poll to another board now it's served its purpose

[Andrew Br]

It's useful to have Rower40 relaying GPS directions up the line 
I don't think that he's available for all the rides that I intend doing this year.

[perpetual dan]

What happened to the vote count?

[Martin]

What happened to the vote count?

new electorate; new poll 

[Kim]

It's useful to have Rower40 relaying GPS directions up the line 

I dunno.  Isn't there a ancient Chinese proverb about a man with five GPS receivers not having a clue where he is?

[rower40]

Standard navigation instruction for oars-people:

"Stay on the wet bit"

I dunno.  Isn't there a ancient Chinese proverb about a man with five GPS receivers not having a clue where he is?

It's a form of mid-life crisis.  I have no idea where my life is going, so I use GPS to know where I've got to.