Europe mapping / Satnav

Help & Advice
1

Couple of quick ones.

What’s the website for sticking a country on yer Garmin? And do they support Czech Republic and Slovenia?

Same re a phone street map. Have been using MapsMe but they want a subscription to download more maps so wondering what people use for simple street maps.

2

Is City Navigator® Europe NTU what your looking for?

https://www.garmin.com/en-GB/p/743228/pn/010-D1790-00#coverage

3

This describes the process. Make sure you install the SD card first.

4

So my Garmin is quite old - bought it second hand about 7 years ago…

A Zumo 340LM. The map that is installed is “Western Europe” - so fck all happening for Czech republic or Slovenia.

Am I looking at downloading/installing the “City Navigator Europe NTU” - seems to the only one available on the Garmin express page - @£75 ?

Got a road map that covers where am going - so fcked if I’m paying £75 for one journey in…

Thinking I may just map it on google maps, photograph it and jobs a goodun - like the old days :slight_smile:

5

Of can I just install/update the Europe map as it says it is “free for life” ?

6

I don’t know but Garmin Western Europe only covers

7

Found that out last summer! Got to the Polish border (Before crossing to Czechia) and just a blank screen.

W@nkers never bothered with Eastern Europe!

8

They obviously know their history & didn’t want to make the same mistake Hitler did…

2 Likes
9

But I come in peace :slight_smile:

10

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Looks like most of Eastern Europe is covered on the Zumo XT.

I’d advise buying an XT rather than shelling out on an additional map.

11

I use tomtom maps on my phone
I like it and it allows you to plan routes, the yearly subscription isn’t a lump of money either

12

Buying a new SatNav?

13

So anyone use Waze?

Put the app on my phone. Does it work offline ?

Happy to just check it whenever I get lost…

14

Paper Michelin maps for planning, Google maps on your phone for directions. Add waypoints to force it to the route you want.

Mapping every last road from home means you miss out on spontaneous opportunities to follow your nose and get lost. That’s when most fun is had.

15

We do all our road-trip planning on a desktop computer before loading onto an old phone I use on a quadlock mount on the bike that has power running to it. The rough process is:

  1. Generate an ideas board of things we’d like to see on the trip, i.e. sights to see, famous routes, places to have days off the bikes and also making sure they’re spaced appropriately apart and we’re not trying to do too little or too much riding in a day.
  2. Validate we can do it in the time available by doing rough mapping on Google Maps by just doing no-motorway/toll route planning between the main points, this will be a gross figure we can reduce with proper planning but it helps make sure we’re not over/under-committing ourselves time-wise.
  3. Plan the routes on the TomTom planner, with one route per day, i.e. “DAY1 - BILBAO TO XXX”. This makes it easy to use on the phone each morning. We might have multiple options for the same day, so multiple routes, i.e. a fast and a slow one so we can decide on the day what suits our energy levels. Save the routes to the TomTom account.
  4. On the iPhone I use on the bike for navigation, I download the maps so they’re available without an Internet connection, then download the routes.
  5. Go through each route on the phone to make sure it loaded.
  6. Load the maps/routes on my main phone as a backup.
  7. Take a paper map as a last-resort option.

Never had an issue with the TomTom software. Find it’s the best for motorcycle roadtrips with nice curvy-road settings. Google Maps is a nicer looking app for sure, but it sucks at roadtrip planning. You can do all your planning on the desktop computer, with course corrections as needed and then when you go and re-access it on the phone, it loses all the corrections and options. Useless.

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16

If you want offline look at OsmAnd or Locus

Both are useable offline

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17

im using old TOM TOM RIDER 400 , all countries working perfect -this year done two trips

  1. London to Budapest / via France , Belgium ,Germany ,Austria , Czech, Slovakia /
  2. London to Portugal / via France , Andorra , Spain /

no issues , perfect work

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18

I wouldn’t trust a google product to do offline well and they’re often actively quite bad at doing planned routes, but I think waze can do some stuff offline. The USP of waze is all the traffic and incident notifications and whatnot, though, which obviously need a data connection.

I’ve long used CoPilot for tours, use Kurviger more for that recently. Kurviger lets you set different legs to use different profiles, so you can commute across the netherlands and then do twisties in germany or something. I wrote a bit about some apps here: Motorbike Satnavs – Avi :)

For Garmins, I think the XT’s the first one that’s not objectively awful, and it only feels quite dated if you’re used to anything from this decade or the last. I’ve tried to get other maps (talkytoaster) on mine (XT and 346) with little useful success; Garmin seem to think their mapping is an important part of the commercial product despite being quite poor.

The XT2 and Tread both look much better, and I’m thinking about replacing my XT with an XT2 even if only to get the stuff that makes it easier to plan routes from a phone and hopefully less bad bluetooth support.

19

Waze is also the best of all of them for telling you the current speed limit and (accurately) your speed. Others seem to do one or the other.

With cameras everywhere these days it’s good to have this info.

20

Ah, I use TomTom Amigo to give me that info, it can sit floating above any satnav app.

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