Transport modes and preferences... what is best?

Cut from another post of Beaver’s, as it’s a topic on its own

Richard


I've been told in the past to use the car as using the bike, it can take you on roads / tracks that only a lightweight off-road bike can manage?

Believe half of what you see and nothing of what you hear, would be my advice.

I have a BMW 1600 GT, weighing 320 kg (plus me and luggage) and am quite happy creating routes (which is what you are doing in the other thread) in motorcycle mode. I also used motorcycle mode when creating routes for use on my HP4 and HP2 Sport.... and bikes long before those. So that should put that one to rest.

Control what you want to do in preference settings. I have a 1600, so I ask BaseCamp to avoid ‘un-made’ roads, which are basically the broken lines on the detailed Garmin maps. This is simply to save me time when creating bespoke routes. I do sometimes take un-made roads but why bother if there is a perfectly good, vaguely metalled, single track (or better) alternative, if you are on 320 kg of motorbike.

I also set my preferences to exclude U-turns. This is not because I dislike U-turns per-se, it’s because I don’t see the point in doing a U-turn, just because Garmin says I should. I try to be in control of my servant, not the other way around. Everything else I leave alone, simply as not selecting too many preferences saves me having to remember which I have set and which I haven’t. I also make sure my settings on my device match those on my home computer. It works for me that way. Others may differ, but is why they are called Personal computers.

What whoever told you what it was you heard, is that car mode, if you are just asking the device or software to “Take me from A to B” (lots of people do no more than this, ever) may well, within its algorithms, avoid goat tracks. In the same way, the lorry mode may well have algorithms to avoid low bridges and goat tracks, too. My Garmin for my motorhome - where I can put the vehicles dimensions and weight in - will route me down more major roads, if it can. There again, my bike GPS when working in in car mode, did try send me in a Porsche GT3 down what I might describe as a Provençal farmer’s road, crossed with a dried up river bed, mated to an Alpine ski run after the snow has melted. Sometimes you just have to ignore the servant’s instructions and beat it with a stick.

Get good, as you are, at creating routes and you won’t need preference settings at all. Trust me on that.

I generally always use Motorcycle recalculation mode (I stopped using the Garmin in the car, as for A to B navigation Google Maps is far superior) and like Wapping I have "avoid u-turns" and "unpaved roads" turned on and "fastest" set up.
If I want to go up winding roads in the mountains I generally plan the route myself, I don't really rely on the sat nav to find something.

Last time I've been sent down a narrow green lane by error by a Garmin was at least 15 years ago.

When creating your own routes (you really should), the sat nav will probably recalculate a few bits where you veer off track. You'll be safe with Motorcycle mode.