Best cycle route planner

[andym]

Andy, I think I had mastered the basics with it, it was a garmin800 and was a really good training aid. To be honest the minute I got an I-phone and loaded cyclemeter fir £4.99 it sort of made the satnav redundant for me. I bought a boardman computer for £30 off eBay as well so I'm pretty sorted for what I need. Sold the Garmin and reclaimed the £300 it cost.

They are good but as long as you have a battery back up the iPhone does thejob as a check on where am gps wise and I enjoy working out position on the maps (even large scale maps which only show basic road layout)

So in fact you are still using a GPS/satnav. Just one in an iPhone.

I have an eTrex Legend. Runs on AA batteries (a pair of rehargeable ones last a good couple of days so charging isn't an issue. It's also much more water resistant than an iPhone - I can leave my GPS on an the handlebars in a thunderstorm, which I definitely wouldn't do with an iPhone.

I definitely wouldn't pay £300 for a Garmin 805 - but that doesn't mean that all 'satnavs are crap'.

I can see the day coming when smartphone-type devices will make dedicated GPSes obsolete - or at least products for a niche market. But I don't think we're not quite there yet. Software like cyclemeter will track your route, but a decent dedicated GPS with decent mappingwill do a lot more.

Carefully planning a route only to find that the GPS recalculates it and sends you down an A road when you've specifically set routepoints to go another way is a unfortunately a common 'gotcha' that probably happens to everyone. It's worth spending some time using the GPS before you set out on a long tour.