LEJOG and not getting lost

On a journey of almost 1000 miles and 13.5 days the inevitable is likely to happen where I get lost and ride in quite possibly the wrong direction. A thousand miles in the correct direction is going to be hard enough so I certainly don't want to add any unneeded miles especially if they include climbing hills.

Thankfully modern technology is all around us and I will be taking advantage of the high tech on offer with possibly a fall back on some rather low tech paper maps as a backup.

If you have read my post LEJOG - My Route you will have seen my routed plotted out on the website ridewithgps.com. This has been a great resource for route planning, allowing detailed route manipulation. All the routes for my 13.5 day LEJOG adventure have been saved online but using them direct from the website to navigate whilst riding through the British country side is just a bridge too far. Thankfully the site allows all of the saved routes to be exported in various formats to be programmed into GPS devices.

My cycle GPS computer of choice is the Garmin Edge 800 which in addition to recording ride details also has a mapping function. RWGPS can export 3 main formats compatible with the Edge 800, TCX Course, GPX Track and GPS Route. I have tested GPX track a few times and found it to be reliable on the Edge 800 and will be the likely format of choice but if I have time over the next two weeks I would like to try TCX course as it includes turn by turn directions with notification whereas GPX Track lays out a course to be followed, though from experience if you do wander of course you can use the maps and navigate back to the intended route. Guess I need to make a decision! If still undecided prior to leaving for the UK I may just export in both formats and copy onto the Edge and decide which to use once I get there. Thankfully the Edge has plenty of memory space especially with the addition of an 8GB micro SD card which is also being used to contain the maps.

Garmin offer their own maps but at $50 plus per map so it can get quite expensive, especially when you want to update. Fortunately there is a much cheaper and in my opinion equally as good an option and that is the Open Street Maps. Links to Garmin formatted maps can be found at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_Garmin/Download. The beauty of the OSM is that the maps tend to be updated on a fairly regular basis and are available at no cost. I have been using the North American maps since December and find them to be as accurate as any Garmin maps I have used. Details on how to download and use can also be found on the link above.



Now off to finish the route fine tuning so I can get them exported!