Garmin Sat Nav points of interest

Earlier this year I treated myself to a new Garmin Sat Nav for the car but obviously usable in van except I can't enter dimensions. 
Everything about it is better than my old one which must have been 10/12 years old and didn't have map updates like the new one.
The one strange thing is , it marks lots of eating places on it with a knife and fork symbol which is fine and it also marks toilets with a male and female symbol but strangely it puts this symbol on virtually every layby. Now the way this country's population behaved recently with regard to litter, is my Sat Nav way ahead of its time with marking toilets in lay-bys?
Anyone elses Sat Nav have this feature?

Try using it in France, every hedge/layby/service carpark etc,  would show a toilet
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Richard

We tend to have stuff like eating places turned off.    Must admit we use an ordinary Garmin in the van in preference to one with motorhome settings.

Yes they can clutter things up a bit.
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Richard

roli wrote:We tend to have stuff like eating places turned off.    Must admit we use an ordinary Garmin in the van in preference to one with motorhome settings.

For a few years after buying my Garmin for motorhomes, it kept sending me down very minor routes notwithstanding that I'd put in the dimensions of the Nuevo ES (which is 10'1" hight). And last year I experimented as suggested on the Forum. I set the height to 11'0", but set the length to a ridiculous 44'0" and width to something equally huge. 

To my surprise, the Garmin became a different device: it assumed I was a HGV and no longer takes me down daft lanes; it also displays all sorts of warnings which didn't appear when it was set to something smaller - such as tight curve ahead / crosswind / road narrows etc etc. They are in fact really useful. The only drawback is that as I'm now a great big articulated truck, the maximum speed limit is 60mph, so it tends to bong a lot!

Assuming that your software is up-to-date, you might like to experiment with setting the profile of your vehicle - unless of course you've already done so recently.

Cymro

Cymro wrote:

roli wrote:We tend to have stuff like eating places turned off.    Must admit we use an ordinary Garmin in the van in preference to one with motorhome settings.

For a few years after buying my Garmin for motorhomes, it kept sending me down very minor routes notwithstanding that I'd put in the dimensions of the Nuevo ES (which is 10'1" hight). And last year I experimented as suggested on the Forum. I set the height to 11'0", but set the length to a ridiculous 44'0" and width to something equally huge. 

To my surprise, the Garmin became a different device: it assumed I was a HGV and no longer takes me down daft lanes; it also displays all sorts of warnings which didn't appear when it was set to something smaller - such as tight curve ahead / crosswind / road narrows etc etc. They are in fact really useful. The only drawback is that as I'm now a great big articulated truck, the maximum speed limit is 60mph, so it tends to bong a lot!

Assuming that your software is up-to-date, you might like to experiment with setting the profile of your vehicle - unless of course you've already done so recently.

Cymro

Now that's a good idea, will give it a go when I go somewhere I don't know how to get there.
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Richard

I have a camper Sat Nav for the van into which I put dimensions, obviously it's a lorry sat nav really with campsites added. I did enter slightly larger dimensions than the van actually is but still it takes us down rather narrow roads and in places like SW Wales the lanes can be a problem with few passing places. I wonder at what dimensions does it become more useful as in Cymro's post?
My cousin once had a lorry sat nav that because of the dimensions he entered , wouldn't take him into towns but simply took him round and around the perimeter roads.
My camper Sat Nav does not have free map updates , is it worth paying £50 for updated maps, do roads change in such major ways to make it worthwhile?