Anybody drawn a track in the middle of a route?

[Steve R]

I'm plotting a route north that will take in an old road, Coldberry End in Weardale/Teesdale, one of the highest tracks in England. I can't find a way of inserting the track, which I have to hand draw in MapSource as it's not on the roads database, in the middle of Garmin's plotted route North. Are Tracks and Routes completely separate things? Has anyone done this?

I know I can simply save a Route, a Track, then another Route which will do the same thing but it means I have to stop and select the next stage of the journey.

There are quite a few legitimate trails I know that aren't featured on MapSource. One of the reasons I got a Zumo was to plot an entire day's riding and I assumed it would deal with going 'off-road'! It does deal with off-road, obviously, but the Track feature that does this doesn't seem to want to talk to the Routes feature.

Help!

Steve.

 

[boredrider]

Off road routes

Steve

Your problem is similar to one that I have recently experienced, and therefore very interesting to me.

There is a big difference (in Garmin speak) between tracks and routes. I find it helps to think of tracks as a historical record of where you've been, and routes as a plan of where you intend to go in the future. To confuse the issue further, it is possible to display tracks on the GPS, and follow them again.

One solution that you could employ would involve defining your on road routes just by using a series of waypoints (or favourites as the Zumo calls them). Upload these, and let the Zumo calculate the quickest/shortest route between them, according to your preferences.

For your offroad routes, you would start at a waypoint (on tarmac) and use the route plotting tool in Mapsource to draw your route using a series of map points. If you have access to Memory Map you could plot this route using OS maps, and then export to Mapsource using a .gpx file. Or you could use Google earth to "see" the bits of unsurfaced road that are not shown in Mapsource.

I have attached a file containing just such a route for the bit of road you refer to, with waypoints at the start and end. (I don't know if any of this is actually rideable of course!). This was done in Memory Map and refined in Mapsource.

One of the major problems with any of this is route recalculation feature, both in Mapsource and in the unit itself. When plotting offroad routes in mapsource, make sure that in Preferences-Routing the route-style is set to "direct route". And on the unit itself make sure that in Settings - Navigation recalculation is set to "prompted". Do not accept any prompts to re-calculate your offroad route 'cos it will get scrambled if you do.

Another problem is that when you are navigating the offroad route, you will have to be zoomed in to only a couple of hundred metres in order to see the road, as the Zumo will insist on putting a huge brown flag at each map point!

If anyone else has any better ideas for any of this, then lets hear them......

Mike

 

[nick]

This any use to you ...

http://www.ukgser.com/forums/showthread.php?t=78772

 

[Steve R]

Thanks Guys...

Very helpful. Plenty to play with.

One thing though, I like the idea of exporting from Memory Map as I've got it already, but I can't find a way of exporting a track as a .gpx file. When I select a track and click on Overlay/email it opens an email with a .mmo file attached. When I go Overlay/export visible it tricks me by allowing me to select .gpx file type but then won't allow me to save it, telling me 'License not valid for CSV Export'.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Steve.