Basecamp - How can I break up a HUGE route into practical daily mileages?

Hi guys.

I've just completed the routing of my planned trip to Iberia in September (see photo). Because my plan is to simply ride the route without any specific timescales in mind, I've booked a one way ferry ticket to Santander which will effectively be my start point. The total distance I anticipate completing when doing the 'GRAND MASTER' is currently showing as 4,976 miles.

I've avoided all the major roads and included as many squiggly bits as I can and therefore only anticipate doing between 150-200 miles per day. Add a few stops for sightseeing and/or bad weather and I expect to be away for about a month.

My problem now is how to break up the GRAND MASTER route into individual manageable daily routes of between 150-200 miles within Basecamp.

Is the only way of achieving this by duplicating the GRAND MASTER route in Basecamp and then deleting all the via points either before or after the days total run (once the (say) 200 mile point has been reached) and then replicating that process many times until the entire route is done?

Wapping O'Master of Basecamp .... Any suggestions?

What you describe is what I would do, as it is a quick job to delete the bits of the route you do not want

Thinking outside of the box here, but why do you want to break it up into sections?
“No Battle Plan Survives Contact With the Enemy”

If you did manage to do what you say you want to in basecamp (it would be a piece of piss in mapsource, but I've never used basecamp so I can't help with the specific answer) then surely, if you're riding the route without any specific time-scales in mind then the first time you decide to cut your day short because you fancy an afternoon off or whatever, those 'sections' are going to become irrelevant

Why not load that entire route, then tootle along around it as the desire takes you......stop when you want, then the next day, just start following the route again......if you get half way around or half way through the time you've allocated, you can trim or cut corners, but it just seems a wasted exercise to me to try and snip up a trip artificially when the trip is laid back and flexible


Don't over-complicate the planning if the plan is to have a chilled trip that will inevitably throw off any detailed itinerary

All very good points Fanum.

My logic was by breaking up the route into 150-200 mile segments I could then get an idea of what time I would be arriving at particular key points (primarily World Heritage sites) and therefore plan some (not all) of my riding days accordingly. It would also give me an approximation of where I was likely to be toward the end of each day - thinking of accommodation now.

I wasn't planning on not having a GRAND MASTER at all. That would still remain, however my fear is that if, for whatever reason, my GRAND MASTER became corrupted I'd have all my eggs in one basket and be stumped.

My final reasoning was to do with 'Recalculating the route'. Should I decide to go off piste, it would take forever to recalculate, whereas if it were in a smaller 'daily chunk' it'd be far quicker.

Breaking it up also just makes it slightly more 'manageable' rather than dealing with a massive 11mb route (which is the current size of it!). If I happen to travel 230 miles in one day, I'd just load up the next 'route section' and carry on going.

Perhaps you're right and I am over complicating it ......

You should certainly break your Master Route into bite sized chunks of say, 200 miles. You can do this in one of several ways and depending on how you created your routes - whether you used waypoints (points you MUST go through) or simply pinned the route down certain roads by using shaping points, or both - muck it around as much as you like.

The first thing to do is to make a copy of your Master Route and give it a new name. Then load it onto a memory stick. Why? Easy, if you muck something up you'll always have your copy to fall back on. Make sure it's a full copy, including any Favouries or tracks you've included. This is your insurance policy.

Now you need to be careful, or at least you might need to be. BaseCamp (at least on a Mac, I don't know if it's the same on a PC) is fussy how you copy or duplicate things. If you make just a copy and then alter the copy you may well find that it alters anything with the same name. There is also a big difference between delete and delete from my collection. The truth is you'll learn as you go along; that's why it's important to have one full copy stored away on a memory stick.

Now comes the bit where you break the route up. Let's do it one way which you might find easiest. Display you Master Route in the screen of your computer and change its colour to green... Or any colour you like providing it's not magenta. Create a new route folder, calling it something that you'll recognise. I'd call it 'Broken up' but that's just me. This is the folder you'll put all your indivividual 200 mile routes. As you you are going over 4000 miles, you'll have over 20 of them when you've finished.

Now with the route creation button click on your start point, which we'll call A. Now click on the Master Route displayed roughly 200 miles along it, which we'll call B. You'll get quite good at this after a while. The chances are you'll now see your original Master Route in green and your fresh route in magenta. Now switch to the route shaping tool and drag the magenta line to follow the green line. Don't worry that the magenta line is not 200 miles, we can tidy that up. Happy that your magenta line follows the green line? Great.

Now look at the mileage of the magenta line. Too long? No problem. Drag the end point B backwards. Too short? Drag it forwards. Recheck that your magenta line does not now need reshaping a bit. Happy? Great, nearly done.

Now bring up the route properties. Change all the points you created to drag the route about to unannounced shaping points. The only ones you can't change are A and B, your start and end points.

You have now created your first 200 mile route, so let's give it a name: (1) 200. By putting a bracketed 1 at the start of the name and a bracketed (2) for the second 200 miles and subsequent routes you'll create, the individual routes will all display sequentially on your device.

Now, is there anywhere on your first 200 mile route that you really MUST go through? Great, let's drop that in. First make it into a Favourite or drag it in from Garmin's long list of Points of Interest or hotels or whatever it is you MUST pass by. Now display the magenta route's properties and drag the point (or points) across. The magenta route will now recalculate. If you dragged several points across and you had them in an odd order, the route might well go crazy or you'll see yourself making U-turns. Don't worry, you can move the points up and down the list to get them into the right order. Happy? Great.

Now make sure that these MUST DO points are announced. This means that they'll appear in your Favourites AND in your route when you first turn the route on in your device. This has several advantages as you can chose to ride straight to them if you chose and / or you'll be able to import them into other routes. You can now get really clever and give specific paused time to each of the MUST DO points and BaseCamp will amend the total journey time accordingly.

Repeat as necessary.

That's one way of doing it. You can do it other ways by going into route properties and deleting or adding points. You can also use the snip and rubber tools and all sorts of copy and paste methods. Everyone has their favourites. You'll find yours. The important thing is to make sure you KEEP your original Master Route safe, so that you can always go back to it. Play around, you really can't break it.

Let us know how you get on. Let us know too what method you use and if you discover any tricks or faults.

Richard

PS I always delete routes from my device as I use them.

Thanks for the insight Richard

Like you, I work on a Mac not a PC.

Having read through some of your previous suggestions on other threads, I've got very, very few actual waypoints - primarily the World Heritage sites, but also a few key scenic points (for a photo) or hotels & restaurants that other tossers have recommended. Everything else is just 'unannounced' shaping points - however I've got hundreds of them!

If the route recalculated for any reason, it was important to me that it still recalculated and remained on the roads I'd already set as my preferred route. My worry was that if there was too big a mileage between shaping points the route may recalculate and take me off my preferred road but down some other roads before returning me to my next shaping point (hope you get my drift). I've created a shipping point for (about) each 10 miles of my route, though if it was obvious that there was little or no need for a shaping point because there really was only one road to follow or I was relaxed about which road to follow, the shaping points were about 20-30 miles apart. I did this by simply zooming in to part of my route, clicking on the magenta line, dragging the route out and then putting it back on the same piece of road - Voila, shaping point created!

I agree with your point about duplicating a route and calling it something else. That's very easy to do in Basecamp and when doing so, it asks if I wanted to duplicate waypoints too. I've always said 'No' to this option otherwise I found all my waypoints were duplicated under 'My Collection'. I've therefore already got an Iberia 2015 GRAND MASTER BACKUP. What I'm less sure about is how to save that to a USB (with the relevant waypoints). Is that an Export function? Is it really necessary to back up to a USB or will a backup in Basecamp, i.e. what I've done already, be sufficient?

I noticed that if I right click on the GRAND MASTER route and select 'Get info', it brings up a box which details the route in total and shows all my shaping and waypoints, but more importantly, if I then select the 'Directions' tab at the top and expand the box, it also shows a shed load of other information such as Distance, Heading, Time, Total time and also Total Distance. I could therefore slice and dice each part of my route by either miles or time.

Given the high number of shaping points, do you think your suggestion is still the best option and better than my thinking of duplicating the GRAND MASTER (not the BACKUP) route in Basecamp about 25 times and going into each one, renaming it (1) 200; (2) 200 etc (I like that idea, though as that's what will also show under My Collection I may need to be a little more imaginative with the names!) then deleting all the waypoints and shaping points before and after the days total run?

Finally, if I did all the duplicating and deleting of the routes in the 'My Collection' folder, I'd be only creating a single daily route which I could then simply drop into my Iberia 2015 folder. Would that make sense?

Cheers!
Peter

I have never given too much thought about the number of shaping points I have put into a route.

In Mapsource I used to have loads, but only because I used to create my routes step-by-step-by-step, literaly clicking my way along roads. You can see the end result in the 80 Virees a Moto sticky in the Travel section; hundreds of flags, each one a shaping point.

Since switching to Basecamp I have become much more confident (and to be honest, adept) at simply clicking on my start and end points A to B, then dragging the magenta line around to follow the roads I want the magenta to follow. If that took one shaping point, 10 or more I have never really cared, not least as the the number of shaping points required is sometimes dictated by how you've reshape the route elesewhere along its journey. As I have the device set permanently to: Fasest route, recalculate prompted or off (ie. I never have auto-recalculate turned on), all the avoidances with the exception of unmade roads unchecked and have turned OFF all the multiple options in Basecamp on my computer, I'm rrasonably confident the device will always take me where I have asked it to take me. It's rare now that my devices make a mistake. Those that it does are more often than not because I have made a mistake in the plotting of my route in the first place, for instance missing that the software had taken a rather silly detour small road to cut a corner off and save a yard, when staying on the main road is of course more sensible. Of course it did, both of the roads are notionally at the same speed limit and one is a yard shorter, of course the software will take it. That the shorter road is two foot wide but metalled is irrelevant to the device or its programming. One day the map data will become so advanced that even small errors like this will probably vanish.

Yes, to save a route to a memory stick / to send to a friend via an email attachment / host on Dropbox or whatever, use Export. You don't have to save your Master route copy to a memory stick. I only suggested it as a safety net in case you were not confident with using Basecamp or your computer. As you clearly are but (like me) still probably learning things as you go along you can safely ignore my tip.

As to the rest? I think you have got it all covered. As you've found, there are several ways to do things. Use what's best and makes sense for you. The great thing about PC's is that they are Personal (with a capital P) ie. you can use them in a way that you like. What makes sense to you might look like a crazy idea to me but it doesn't really matter, providing it works. Off course there are some basic ground rules and probably best practice disciplines that it's always a good thing to follow (like knowing the difference between delete and remove from collection) but as to the rest.... Play about and learn.

What is most maybe most interesting in your post is that you've managed to create a huge route in Basecamp and are learning how to break it up / play around with it. It really does put the lie to the notion that Basecamp is sh1t or impossible to use. There really is no better way to learn than to do something for some real purpose. Your very exciting trip at round Spain (I'm very jealous) has given you that. Let us know how it all goes, please.

If you come up with any glitches or find some excellent way of doing something before or during your month away let us know. We can try to help and hearing about real glitches is interesting anyway.

Richard

PS I am lucky enough to have a MacBook Air which I take with me on longer jaunts. It's proved pretty handy when away for quickly creating new routes or at the end of the day mending any glitches in the route for the day just past. I do though find it much easier to use with an external mouse, rather than the smart pad, when using Basecamp.... That's Personal computers for you!

Having the laptop with me saved my bacon last bank holiday, going away with Nutty, Bouncer and Toddmeister. Somehow I had sent them (and myself) completely the wrong routes for two of our four days away! As I had my laptop - and a decent paper map - I was able to hack a route out in the evening and then load it onto three other devices. The other day's route I remembered that I had shared on UKGSer, so I found the thread and downloaded it from there.

PPS Despite the huge reliability of modern GPS devices I have gone back to writing out the place names of towns and villages that I'll pass through on a sheet of paper, which I then put on my tankbag, old skool style. It's useful as it fixes some places in your mind as you ride along, gives you a much better idea of where you are and really comes into its own if you have a significant detour. It doesn't take long once you get in the discipline of doing it. I use the devices screen, zooming it along the route at a scale so that just the place names stand out but nothing else. It's then very easy to copy them onto paper, easier than a paper map in fact as there are less distractions and the screen is always exactly where you last looked at it when you look back.

Place names on paper. Me too since last year when the Zumo frequently took me down single track roads when there was a D or N road nearby that would have added 3 inches to the journey.
Admittedly that was using a Zumo 220 which didn't have as many routing options as some others. Happily its power cable got written off in a thunderstorm in S France, so I came all the way back using a glove-box atlas of France and paper and pen.
Main lesson learned - I spent much more time looking around for signs and actually seeing and taking in where I was going. Much more fun.

Luckily the power cable got written off......

Every cloud has a silver lining

Thanks Richard & Alan. Good points.

It never occurred to me to switch off the 'recalculate' or set it to prompted. That'll certainly make a difference!

I've spent hours and hours on this route, doing exactly as you suggested ...... zooming in on the entire route and looking for any anomalies (for example where it deviates from the main road to save a few metres). I used to love Mapsource but the more I, as you say, play around with Basecamp, the more I like it. The only difficulty I seem to have is locating certain places but I think that's down to their use of the local spelling / terminology. I now tend to search on Google maps and then locate it in Mapsource.

One problem which I don't yet appear to have overcome is transferring the routes to my device. I make a habit of deleting all my old routes, waypoints, favourites, EVERYTHING on my Zumo 660 before I attempt to send anything new to it.

The problem I have is that having sent my new route and details to the device, it also seems to import other (historical) information in too, for example other routes or waypoints from previous trips. Bit weird!

Question for you - Having connected your (GPS) unit to your Mac, when you select 'Send to Device' have you highlighted (selected) the FOLDER that all your routes and waypoints were in for that particular trip, or do you go into the folder itself and select all the routes and waypoints within it before choosing 'send to device'?

Cheers

Auto-reacalculate is a thing of the devil, when using your own carefully prepared routes. I have seen more bods confused when their machine goes berserk due to this function (and them forgetting that they've set their preferences to avoiding U-turns and favouring wiggly roads) than anything else.

It is only really useful when:

1. A bod has not prepared his own route but has simply asked the device to take him from A to B, as so many do. Then, of course if he somehow deviates from that auto-created route, he'll want it to auto-recalculate for him or he'll be lost forever.

2. You are in a big city, looking for your pre-programmed hotel, in the dark, in the rain on a series of one way streets and you've somehow overshot the front door.

============

I select the Folder, or at least I think I do. You can 'Send to device' in several ways and / or chose what data to send.

I guess that if you have created a route from points (let's calls it historical data) from other trips, it might bring other 'old data' along with it. Certainly BaseCamp does interlink stuff, hence the need to be careful when deleting bits and pieces.

I must confess I haven't yet found out all the ins-and-outs of working with historic data in BaseCamp and how it all relates to creating new routes. I suspect there's a whole lot more going on (and potentially usefully available) than many of us have yet learnt.

The more I look at it, the really more powerful it's becoming. It's reall quite clever what it can do. I am even starting to love properly created waypoints within routes, something that I never thought I would do. I used them for the first time on a jaunt I made last bank holiday, adding in estimated stopped times and the like, just to see how and if I coukd make it work.

They all worked. Silly maybe but actually quite useful, as I could answer, with pinpoint accuracy, the oft heard... "when will we be there?" question. Will I use them all the time? Definitely, no. Will I use them when out and about with a bunch of bods and where I know we are going to stop somewhere definite for say lunch? Maybe, yes.

Wapping said:

The more I look at it, the really more powerful it's becoming. It's reall quite clever what it can do. I am even starting to love properly created waypoints within routes, something that I never thought I would do. I used them for the first time on a jaunt I made last bank holiday, adding in estimated stopped times and the like, just to see how and if I coukd make it work.

They all worked. Silly maybe but actually quite useful, as I could answer, with pinpoint accuracy, the oft heard... "when will we be there?" question. Will I use them all the time? Definitely, no. Will I use them when out and about with a bunch of bods and where I know we are going to stop somewhere definite for say lunch? Maybe, yes.

Click to expand...

Thanks Richard.

I've been using some of the departure & arrival times within Waypoints for quite a while. For example, I know I need to be at Portsmouth Docks for 4pm, so I select that as my arrival time and it automatically tells me what time I need to be leaving home. Similarly if I wanted to add a rest stop on the way for half an hour I could factor that in too and it'll recalculate my departure time from home accordingly.

On my trip, I've allowed an hour or two for 'sightseeing' at some key places and even half an hour for photos at a viewpoint and it's all reflected within my estimated arrival & departure times. All very clever.

One final question (if you think you may have an answer ....!).

There are occasions when I transfer a route to my device and if I then look at my Routes or Favourites, they're all in there (plus possibly other data, as per my previous comment), however there are other times when they're not in my Routes or Favourites and I have to 'Import' them into my unit. Any ideas why that might be?

Best wishes, Peter

I sometimes get that too. I had the same thing with Mapsource and all sorts of earlier devices and never really found out why, so it's not a BaseCamp / Nav V issue per-se. I used to think it was something to do with route lengths or the device's ability to only display / hold on its scree a certain number of routes. Similarly, I sometimes used to send say 8 routes at once, sometimes perhaps only 3 would turn up. Sometimes 7 and sometimes all 8.

I have two Nav 5's. One will never load the routes at all. My computer tells me they have been sent OK and I can see them if I look at the device's drive on the computer screen. I can even re-import them back, so they are clearly there. The other device works perfectly normally, I just Bluetooth the routes across to the other device, which works fine. It is very odd.

Similarly, the first device has loaded all its latest maps onto the data card, whilst the second device has loaded them into the device itself. Again, I have no idea why. Not being in the slightest bit IT literate (I just turn the things on) I have never dared to enquire of myself why or to try to mend it.

Phew! Glad it's not just me encountering those sort of problems!

Thanks very much for your time Richard. I'm very grateful.

Turning into a nightmare

Having now finalised my trip and routes, the next step was to transfer all 145 waypoints and 41 routes to my Zumo 660.

Principal seems relatively easy doesn't it? Forget it! Several hours and two calls to Garmin later I'm still trying.

I first tried highlighting the folder in Basecamp and then chose 'Send to device'. After a couple of minutes I received an error message along the lines of 'error, unable to transfer' (forgot to take a screenshot ).

Once I unplugged the device and checked it, looking into the Favourites folder revealed nothing. First phone call to Garmin .....who suggested I plug in my device to Basecamp and when the box at the top comes up which details Zumo 660 and 16Gb card, that I simply drag and drop my route folder in Basecamp into the 16Gb card folder. So I did just that.

However, once done and checking the 'Custom Routes' option on the device showed no change i.e. still both empty, however when I checked the contents of the SD card on its own, there was a subfolder called GPX and within it there were 41 routes. So it looked as though all the routes had successfully transferred to the 16Gb micro SD card. Hurrah! Some progress at least! So where the hell were these routes and why didn't it display in my Customs Routes folder?

I then checked the contents of the 'MyData' folder, (under Tools; My Data; Import data) and Hey! Ho! after searching for routes, it revealed there were 34 routes in there which I could then import - no idea why only 34 and not 41.

So, I selected import 'All'. This resulted in an error message popping up which said "Cannot store more than 20 routes. Remove 14 routes and try again".

I deselected 14 routes and the 'Import' process started off for the first 20 - one route at a time with a re-calculation of each route gradually going from 1% to 100%. I've no idea why it needed to recalculate anything as I made certain before I started that the map set on Basecamp was the same version as the Device (v2016.10). This took over 2 hours. Given the first error message, I figured that once the first 20 had gone through, I'd simply import the next 14 .......wrong assumption!

The first 20 were 'imported' successfully and now appeared in within my 'Custom routes' icon on the Zumo. Great. Time to import the other 14. I went into the 'MyData' folder, selected routes and after a little searching it brought back the remaining 14 routes which I then ticked and selected 'Import'. Another message instantly popped up which said "Cannot import more routes - route memory is full". Whhhhaaaaaaat??

Second phone call to Garmin who confirmed that ..... wait for it ....... the MAXIMUM number of routes that could be imported into the Zumo 660 (and any other Garmin device) was 20! I was flabbergasted!

They simply suggested that I start fiddling or merge my number of routes to ensure it was kept below 20. I (politely) pointed out that I'd broken my journey up into travelling days and merging two or more days was far from ideal - particularly as I liked to delete each route for each day once I'm on the move i.e. delete day 1 once I start day 2. I'd also experienced problems before where the SIZE of the route meant that the Zumo couldn't import it either, so said (to Garmin) that if I merged the routes of several days, did I have to make sure that the overall file size was below a maximum and what should that maximum be?

Garmin confirmed that large files would reject in the Zumo, but could offer me no advice as to what that maximum file size could be for it to be accepted!! Their solution to my problem was that I should transfer half my routes to a 2nd micro SD card and swop them over half way through my trip! Given that all my maps are also held on the Micro SD card, I'm not sure how easy that would be!

In summary :

• The number of routes on my 16gb micro SD card shows that all 41 are on the card (hurrah!)
• The number of routes that are shown under 'Mydata'; routes is 34!
• The maximum number of routes that I can 'import' and store within the routes tab on my Zumo is 20.

I've now having to experiment with deleting routes from my 'Custom routes' folder on the Zumo and seeing if I can 'Import' further routes from the MyData folder to the 'Custom routes' folder once I've made some space and am hoping that at some point the remaining 7 routes that I know are on my micro SD card will appear in the MyData folder so that I can then 'import' them into my 'Custom routes' folder too to enable me to start the route!!

What a mess! And all because of a poxy 20 route maximum in the Zumo 660. How stupid and short sighted of Garmin.

Has anyone else experienced this problem? If so, how did you get around it? Would be grateful for any help!

Cheers
Peter

Can I ask a question to you knowledgable guys.
I have basecamp on a mac and a BMW Nav4.
I create a route from the Algarve to the Pyrenees avoiding Madrid. I transfer the route and import the route it insists on routing me via Madrid. Is there anything I can do to stop the Nav4 doing this. Also I have deleted old data but it keeps being transferred?
Thanks in advance
Paul

Hoff said:

Can I ask a question to you knowledgable guys.
I have basecamp on a mac and a BMW Nav4.
I create a route from the Algarve to the Pyrenees avoiding Madrid. I transfer the route and import the route it insists on routing me via Madrid. Is there anything I can do to stop the Nav4 doing this. Also I have deleted old data but it keeps being transferred?
Thanks in advance
Paul

Click to expand...

Hi Paul,
Couple of questions back to you ......

You say you create a route from the Algarve to the Pyrenees avoiding Madrid. Are you using Basecamp to plot the route and then 'dragging' the route to avoid Madrid before transferring it to your device?
Are your route settings and avoidances the same in Basecamp and your Nav4? Might be that Basecamp is set for 'Shortest route, avoid tolls etc', but the settings in your Nav4 might be different ....

Check and let me know ....
Peter

Hi Peter
Yes, I created the route in basecamp and added a way point to avoid Madrid.
I have checked in basecamp and in routing preferences I am on fastest time with the only avoidance as unpaved roads.
In my Nav 4 I have only unpaved roads as avoidances, am on faster time and recalculation mode as prompted.
I then connected the device to my mac and transferred the contents of the folder, not the folder itself to the mac. It then tells me that some routes created were on a map not present on the device, I have checked and am running City Navigator Europe NT 2015.40 on both. When I got this last message I declined the option to recalculate.
In my Nav 4 I then go to tools, my data, import data and routes it then gives me the option to select all the old deleted routes and I can´t see how to delete these. Anyway I select the required route and import successfully only to see when I preview it that hey presto it goes through Madrid!!
Got any ideas?
Cheers
Paul

Hoff said:

Hi Peter
Yes, I created the route in basecamp and added a way point to avoid Madrid.
I have checked in basecamp and in routing preferences I am on fastest time with the only avoidance as unpaved roads.
In my Nav 4 I have only unpaved roads as avoidances, am on faster time and recalculation mode as prompted.
I then connected the device to my mac and transferred the contents of the folder, not the folder itself to the mac. It then tells me that some routes created were on a map not present on the device, I have checked and am running City Navigator Europe NT 2015.40 on both. When I got this last message I declined the option to recalculate.
In my Nav 4 I then go to tools, my data, import data and routes it then gives me the option to select all the old deleted routes and I can´t see how to delete these. Anyway I select the required route and import successfully only to see when I preview it that hey presto it goes through Madrid!!
Got any ideas?
Cheers
Paul

Click to expand...

Very strange Paul. What's even more strange is that the unit is telling you (upon import) that the map set in the Nav 4 is different to the map used on your Mac yet you've confirmed both map sets are the same!

I'm not familiar with the Nav 4. Are you able to or have you got a micro SD inserted in it?

If it does have an SD card, I'd start all over and remove ALL the routes and waypoints from your Nav 4 so that you're starting with a clean slate.

If you have anything on your Nav 4 that you'd want to keep, such as MP3 files I suggest you back up the data before starting.

Before you start, a word of caution first .....

This process worked for me on my Zumo 660, I'm not familiar with the Nav 4 but assume they're (broadly) the same. Please ensure your comfortable with my suggestion before proceeding as I wouldn't want to be held liable should something not work as I envisaged.

1. Fire up your Nav 4 and select Tools; My Data; Scroll down and select Delete Favourites and then Delete Routes. That'll clear the Favourites and the Routes from the memory of your Nav 4 (though they'll still be on your SD card).
2. Plug your Nav 4 into your Mac. If it's anything like mine, it'll automatically launch Garmin Express. Assuming that Garmin Express says that your software and maps up to date, you can close it down.
3. Launch Finder in your Mac and under Devices down the left hand side, in addition to the usual stuff like Paul's Mac or Time Machine, you (should) see your Garmin unit and also your micro SD card.
4. Click on your micro SD card to see what's in there.
5. If you have a folder with your songs in, then copy that to a folder on your Mac before proceeding further.
6. If there's a folder called GPX, go into that. That's where all your routes are kept.
7. I'd right click and then delete the contents of the GPX folder and (if you had one), the folder containing your MP3 music.
8. Still leaving your Nav 4 plugged in, I'd then launch Mapsource
9. Once Mapsource is open, toward the top left hand side you should see that it's recognised your Nav 4 and loads up the maps. It should recognise your your micro SD card.
10. Within Mapsource, select the folder in which your routes (and waypoints) are kept.
11. Highlight to select them all, then then simply drag them up the screen and drop them into your SD card.
12. Allow a bit of time for them to copy across.
13. Once done, go back to Finder and 'eject' both your SD card and the Nav 4.
14. Once they've ejected (be careful not to unplug too soon), you can then disconnect the Nav 4 from your Mac.
15. Power off your Nav 4
16. Power it back on again.
17. At this point, you should get a message along the lines of "New User Data has been located would you like to import it now"?
18. Select Yes
19. It'll then import your waypoints and route(s) one by one and recalculate each one as it does so. I had 30 odd routes on mine and it took a couple of hours to 'Import & recalculate" all of them. If you've just a few routes it should be relatively quick.
20. Once that's finalised, go into your Favourites and check that all the waypoints are there, then
21. Go into your Custom routes and see if the route(s) are in there too.
22. Now comes the moment of truth .......
23. If it still shows that you're going through Madrid - phone Garmin support!!

Good luck & let me know how you get on.

Regards,
Peter

Before you embark on Peter's suggestion, check what the message said.

You tell us that the maps on your computer and device are the same. So, perhaps the question is:

Were the routes created in an earlier / different map version? If they were, they'll require some sort of recalculation if they are to display properly on your device. Similarly, if they were created with some different preferences, those preferences might (I am not sure) be carried through, too.

PS Your device will probably not delete routes until you re-connect it to your computer. It's a safety measure, to avoid bods deleting routes by accident when away from home.