Sat Nav test

Call me old fashioned but still use a map and sense of direction.

OK - You're old fashioned! 

But how do you read the map when you're driving, and relate it to the road signs which are notoriously unreliable, specially in France. A favourite trick is to sign quite clearly until you are about ten miles from where you want to go - then the signs suddenly vanish. Try finding a supermarket in a back street industrial estate!!

Apart from the fact that my sense of direction is practically non-existent, I couldn't possibly remember a (say) 200 mile route on foreign roads where the road numbers, if they are shown at all, are different on the map, the road atlas, the road signs etc.. No two seem to agree on what the number should be!! 

Quilter wrote:

dbroada wrote:
looks like POIs are they way forward.

Snag is that to find up to date datasets online is becoming increasingly difficult.  

I know many people rely on a mobile phone or tablet to navigate by but, given the stringent rules that apply to even touching a mobile phone while driving and the size of screen you are allowed  to use without it being deemed distracting, I wonder how legal either of these methods are ?  We’ve just bought a new car with a built in TomTom sat nav with huge screen and joystick control. There is no way I could drive and fiddle with the sat nav but it seems that is not seen as an issue.

Hi Dave and Quilter

POIs - yes Dave, but not necessarily all on the satnav. As Quilter said earlier, the very limited range of available icons makes it quite confusing.

Digressing for a moment. We use an old smart phone as a satnav, but I have removed every facility from it that I can, so it obviously is never used as a phone. It is in effect a dedicated satnav, and I'm moderately confident that Monsieur Le Flic would accept it once he had examined it, and been shown both of our phones which we use as phones.

Back to the POIs.

I don't want them on the satnav as I find them an irritating nuisance. I rarely want more than one category at a time, so Maps.Me on Sian's tablet is a very effective answer. We've got everything on there - supermarkets, aires, campsites, LPG stations etc., all with the same little red pushpin as an icon. This is no problem at all however, as it takes only a second to switch on just the category you want at the time, so there's never any confusion as only that one is shown on the map.

We tend to want POIs only for short distance use, as our main route navigation is taken care of by the satnav. If we want to find a (hidden!! ) supermarket however, the tablet is very handy as Sian can navigate to it quite easily on the big screen.

Maps.Me is free, and once the POIs are converted to kml files (details if required) they load into it automatically. You just send them to yourself as an email attachment, click on the attachment, and Maps.Me digests them instantly.

It works for us, and everything is offline! 

One feature I HATE is the route clearing as you get to your destination. I know you no longer need to know where the place is but if you have to "drive around the block" to find a parking spot you (I) might need directions again.


It's there in recent destinations. Takes a couple of taps to get it mind, not ideal if you have just missed it and are hoping to catch it on the way back.

Just as annoying is if you want to go via a particular route and achieve this by entering waypoint(s), it then doesn't recognise that you've reached there unless you hit the exact spot so keeps trying to take you back rather than on to the next point.  

I use a Garmin Camper SatNav, it was brilliant in both the ROI, Spain and Portugal after I managed to master the free software called Basecamp.  With Basecamp you can plot the exact route you want to take using waypoints which you can set so they don't annoy you by telling you that you have reached them.  It took me a good week to learn to use the program properly and a lot of YouTube videos but IMO it was worth it.  If you are not moderately computer literate I would steer clear of it, however it really is worth persevering with it.  We did the N2 in Portugal and needed to follow that road only, I tried to set POI's but it kept trying to send down either the fastest or shortest route, neither which I wanted, really frustrating.  Map updates are free for life, it also advises you on sharp bends ahead and steep inclines/declines.  It also shows you how far you are from the next three fuel stations and also will show you a list of supermarkets, restaurants, toilets etc.  It really is a great bit of kit, especially when travelling abroad.