Creating Irish routes in Garmin BaseCamp, what have I learned?

Wapping

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1. The detailed Garmin maps are pretty good for the majority of Ireland.

2. They do though sometimes not have all of the smallest little roads and sometimes lack some of the sites and sights to see in the dropdown lists.

3. Downloading and installing Open Street Map's routable map for Ireland, then installing it into BaseCamp, addressed this problem completely.

4. Setting my BaseCamp routing preferences to allow unmade roads also helped. Just don't forget to turn the preference setting off again when you have finished, assuming that is you do not use unmade roads by default. If you do, you'll not have needed to have turned it off in the first place; so stop when you get to 3 above.

Go to: http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/

To download any Open Street routable map you fancy and install it into Basecamp. Then summon it up from the dropdown list in BaseCamp. It will also help if you install the same map onto your Garmin device, too. Job done.
 
They do though sometimes not have all of the smallest little roads

Trust me when I tell you that if they’re not on current versions of BC most bikermates are unlikely to want to ride their awesome steed up them :aidan
 
Absofugginlutely Richard :yelrotflm
You bring that yoke over here & we could have some great fun :JB
 
Made for a 1600GT then :D

I was out & about over the weekend & thought of you & your 16GT. This was a road, they're called 'boreens' here, basically means the 'way the cow wandered' so none of them are straight, that Garmin routed me down. The bit in the middle is what you want to look out for, especially on a damp day or early in the morning, cos they can be a tad slippy. This one was so narrow that the shrubbery on the left side whacked off my arm most of the way along it. And that was on a little R80. Can't imagine it would help the shine on your big fairing....

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I'm still looking for roads that aren't on BC. Passed one the other day but didn't have time to explore it to see was it anything more than a track to a house. I'll keep you posted ;)
 
I constantly switch between the Garmin and Open Street Map's, and not just for Ireland.

I'd think that for most non-offroaders the Garmin maps of Ireland will throw up more than enough "challenging" roads without unmade roads being included.

Thanks for all your work Wapping - I'm planning a WAW+++ route that will take about a month to do if I want to stop and actually see things rather than ride past them.

Jockser - my brother works as a systems developer/drone pilot for Manna Aero, an Irish drone company. They've been testing a delivery service in In Moneygall for things like bread, milk, and medical prescription medicines for the elderly/isolated and are about to start a similar delivery service in Kildare soon, look out for big drones overhead.
 
So one question. I have tried this approach before where I wanted to get to a mates house that wasn't shown on the Garmin Maps (HERE) so I used Google Maps to plot the route and then transferred to my Nav VI. When I got to said turnoff and track, the Nav wouldn't do anything as its internal maps showed no roads, so I kind of assumed if its not on the Garmin Map, how can it navigate to somewhere that isn't in its mapping database? Or does it just show nothing and a pointer to follow
 
Jockser - my brother works as a systems developer/drone pilot for Manna Aero, an Irish drone company. They've been testing a delivery service in In Moneygall for things like bread, milk, and medical prescription medicines for the elderly/isolated and are about to start a similar delivery service in Kildare soon, look out for big drones overhead.

Hi Bob, how's things ?
Tell him I'll be out with my 12 gauge :D

I think that's a great idea. Although we're not terribly isolated here in Kildare anything that reduces the traffic on our roads, especially the smaller country roads, has got to be good for us all
 
So one question. I have tried this approach before where I wanted to get to a mates house that wasn't shown on the Garmin Maps (HERE) so I used Google Maps to plot the route and then transferred to my Nav VI. When I got to said turnoff and track, the Nav wouldn't do anything as its internal maps showed no roads, so I kind of assumed if its not on the Garmin Map, how can it navigate to somewhere that isn't in its mapping database? Or does it just show nothing and a pointer to follow

Two choices:

1. Easiest, is to download a copy of the routable Open Street Map of Ireland, or of just the piece of Ireland that you want. It is rare that OSM does not show anything and everything, including footpaths. You can plot routes on this, which will run quite happily on BaseCamp / MapSource / just about any Garmin device.

2. Without using OSM, in BaseCamp / MapSource put a viapoint marker (or create a favourite) on the 'invisible' road and you can route to it just like normal. You may well see a straight line but don't worry about that. It is simply because BaseCamp / Mapsource does not know there is a little road there, so cannot follow it as such.

3. You can also create a little bit of separate 'off road' route and then splice it into a regular route. I did this just recently in order to force a route across an otherwise perfectly reasonable bridge in Scotland, which neither Garmin or OSM maps knew was passable. This will give you a sort of combined 'hybrid' route, which is perfectly rideable, your Garmin device being able to follow it all.

Any more questions? Head to the gps section, where good advice abounds.
 
I was out & about over the weekend & thought of you & your 16GT. This was a road, they're called 'boreens' here, basically means the 'way the cow wandered' so none of them are straight, that Garmin routed me down. The bit in the middle is what you want to look out for, especially on a damp day or early in the morning, cos they can be a tad slippy. This one was so narrow that the shrubbery on the left side whacked off my arm most of the way along it. And that was on a little R80. Can't imagine it would help the shine on your big fairing...

I'm still looking for roads that aren't on BC. Passed one the other day but didn't have time to explore it to see was it anything more than a track to a house. I'll keep you posted ;)

Aha, that is what a 'boreen' is. Somehow I imagined that they only crossed fells and mountains.

My parents house in France was up an unmade road, baked rock hard in Provencal summers, broken up when the thunderstorms came in September and then often snowed on in winter. The 1600 was fun up that, as was a FireBlade and a GT3 I owned. It was also at about 45 degrees in some points. It explains why the 2CV endures.

Great fun these little roads but I can see why something a bit less that 320 kg might be, shall we say, 'sensible', unless you just fire it up and go for it.

The only time I have ever been thinking, "This is NOT a good idea, Wapping" was in Belgium. There is a place (God knows where it was) with a village at the top of a very steep (it seemed vertical) hill. The whole area was dug up, so like a twit I decided to ride up a narrow (less than a car's width) alley, which was cobbled, flanked all the way up with houses, with doors opening straight onto the alley. It really was like an alley to the skies, about 50 yards long but it seemed miles. I have never been up anything so steep, narrow or vertical. It would have hurt so much had I fallen off, not least the 1600 would have been jammed solid. In a few words, I was genuinely crapping myself. I was dreading someone stepping out of their door or it being a dead end, I would have been 'fecked' as they say. The noise of my ascent was unbelievable, bouncing off the houses. It was so steep that I had to go at about 30 mph just to get up. At the top there was a sort of T-junction, again narrow but say a car and a bit wide. I knew I could not stop but had to turn right at the top... I just prayed that nobody would be standing there or no car would be crossing the junction, as I really could not stop. Phew, made it! I have always wondered where it was, as I would like to go back again, on foot the time.
 


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