June travels to Scotland

[SeumasA]

Jock, I get the feeling you don't want us to come visit. I'm hurt.

[The Q]

Our sat nav has the voice of Yoda it says 'Your journey you may start. May the force be with you.' once it has calculated the route - rather reassuring I think.

Phone connection is not available everywhere, so relying on one for directions could be problematic, as - at least with my husband's phone - there is nothing downloaded to it, so when the signal goes it all goes.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

This is why I recommended Navmii as it down loads the map to the phone or tablet all 500Mb, the phone signal is no good here in many parts of Norfolk either.

Anyway BrewerPaul, Enjoy your Holiday

[Jock Scot]

Jock, I get the feeling you don't want us to come visit. I'm hurt.

I am delighted to meet with any xmarker that visits this part of the world, but I must admit that I do like to preserve a wee bit of privacy from "Big Brother". In fact I derive a modicum of comfort and some amusement from those that rely so heavily on technology that still has a few failings!

[tpa]

Originally Posted by CameronCat

Sorry, gents; experience leads me to disagree with this one. Or you need a different satnav...some work really well.

We carried our Garmin -- "Bitchin' Betty" -- with us on our Haggis Hegira last Sept. It had updated UK maps on a micro-card (the US unit only came w/ N. American maps) and it worked an absolute treat on Skye and up to Thurso and on Orkney, plus guiding us round the inner workings of Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

I too use a Garmin and whilst mostly fairly good, particularly in towns where it tells you road names rather than numbers, it has 2 major failings:

1. It relies on you looking at the screen in many instances instead of being able to rely on the spoken instructions, which is a lot less than ideal approaching a busy junction, I've even accidentally missed an ill positioned red light as a result of this fortunately with no serious consequence.

2. It does not tell you about every junction. Other roads may or may not appear on the screen, but there is not a hint in the speech. So when barrelling along an apparently dead straight dark road at night, having been told that the next junction is a left turn 1½ miles away, it is somewhat disconcerting to come upon a T-junction ½ a mile further on which has no advanced warning sign and requires a very sharp stop followed by a right turn. I won't say what we called it after that.

I would be interested to hear if other systems suffer the same failings though realise that those available in the US may not have the same software as the UK versions.

[CameronCat]

>> "It relies on you looking at the screen in many instances instead of being able to rely on the spoken instructions..."

-- I think this may be more a question of how you use the unit. Not always, but in many cases I keep the voice muted and just rely on the screen with a quick glance. (Perhaps a leftover from my rallying days.)
I find the "distance remaining" in the upper left corner quite helpful. (e.g. 0.3 miles = not this intersection; 400 ft = coming up next, 80 ft = this one! etc.) On our trip, I found the GPS mileages to be accurate (vs. the car odometer) to well under 0.1 mi so no worries in open country. In the city, we tended towards street name identification at the intersection.
I do agree that the GPS can get a bit puzzled by roundabouts, commanding a "right turn" when you need to go all the way 'round first.

>>"It does not tell you about every junction. Other roads may or may not appear on the screen... I would be interested to hear if other systems suffer the same failings though realise that those available in the US may not have the same software as the UK versions."

--This was a problem we did not have. Our map update was from Open Street Map - a free source on the Internet - not from Garmin. The maps we rec'd were based on the UK Ordinance maps and even showed unpaved tracks and hiking trails. None of those were stated as junctions for the car but simply shown as dotted or colo(u)red lines.

[The Q]

An ordinance Survey map is definitely the best for information when you have the time to read it. It will show ALL paths and roads and once you've learnt the coding, you can tell whether they are foot paths with or without a right of way to the public, Roads tarmacked private or public or green lane( green lane untarmacked but open to the public with the right vehicle eg 4WD). Also due to the contour lines you can read hills slopes etc.
However there can still be errors, The Housing estate My Parents live on took nearly 20 years to appear!

Reading OS maps was part of a geography Scottish certificate of Education when I took it back in 73

[tpa]

>> "It relies on you looking at the screen in many instances instead of being able to rely on the spoken instructions..."

-- I think this may be more a question of how you use the unit. Not always, but in many cases I keep the voice muted and just rely on the screen with a quick glance. (Perhaps a leftover from my rallying days.)

I don't get that. In my rallying days I preferred to keep my eyes on where I was hoping to go and relied on the spoken word of the navigator, not a quick peak at the OS map while driving. Once or twice I maybe would have been better off doing so, but that is another story.

My original satnav worked fine just from the spoken word. I could concentrate on looking where I was going instead of studying the screen. Occasionally wound up in the wrong town but that was obviously an inherent mapping problem rather than misinterpreting the instructions.

>>I find the "distance remaining" in the upper left corner quite helpful. (e.g. 0.3 miles = not this intersection; 400 ft = coming up next, 80 ft = this one! etc.) On our trip, I found the GPS mileages to be accurate (vs. the car odometer) to well under 0.1 mi so no worries in open country. In the city, we tended towards street name identification at the intersection.
I do agree that the GPS can get a bit puzzled by roundabouts, commanding a "right turn" when you need to go all the way 'round first.

I agree with that, though just occasionally in towns the instructions come too late and roundabout instructions often seem at variance with the road sign directions, but usually the satnav is correct with the sign failing to show a minor road. However the verbal instructions often require a glance a the screen to interpret them correctly.

>>"It does not tell you about every junction. Other roads may or may not appear on the screen... I would be interested to hear if other systems suffer the same failings though realise that those available in the US may not have the same software as the UK versions."

--This was a problem we did not have. Our map update was from Open Street Map - a free source on the Internet - not from Garmin. The maps we rec'd were based on the UK Ordinance maps and even showed unpaved tracks and hiking trails. None of those were stated as junctions for the car but simply shown as dotted or colo(u)red lines.

When I said it does not tell you, I meant there is no spoken indication. There is usually an indication on the screen, but even if you look at the screen more than I do, if the voice says the next junction is 1½ miles ahead, you are not looking to see if there is a major one before that which you are not being told about. Of all the junctions to omit a T-junction is about the worst.

[David]

Cant beat a good map, the A to Z series of maps in the region of 3 miles to the inch are good driving maps, no batteries, GPS or phone signal required. You cant beat a map, but then I'm an analogue man trapped in the digital age.
http://www.az.co.uk/?nid=36&iid=10345#.VVZeFv85DZ4

[brewerpaul]

Cant beat a good map, the A to Z series of maps in the region of 3 miles to the inch are good driving maps, no batteries, GPS or phone signal required. You cant beat a map, but then I'm an analogue man trapped in the digital age.
http://www.az.co.uk/?nid=36&iid=10345#.VVZeFv85DZ4

Thanks for the link, I'll look for these when we get to Scotland. I enjoy my share of technology but am also a map kinda guy. When all else fails with technology you can always pull out a map and perhaps compass to find you way. A few years back Jennifer and I tried to climb Glacier peak in Washington state. The approach is 25 miles long before you even get to the mountain proper. I used maps and UTM grid to plot out my route and for fun put the grid points in a GPS I have. It was fun to see if we hit the waypoints, and we did. Though I had the GPS I relied mostly on the maps for our route. Thank you everyone for your input on navigating Scotland.

We have been exploring the many things we can do on our travels, one of the niceties of the internet and technology. One thing we wanted to do was go to a Highlands Game. We found 2 possibilities and narrowed it to one. We decided, because we will be in Stirling, to go to the Kenmore games on July 1st. Looking at the map Kenmore is on the route we rode bikes on three years ago. It will be fun to drive back through Callander, Killin and along Lock Tay. Has anyone ever attended the Kenmore games. We also were able to secure a night stay at the Moulin Hotel near Pitlochry. Pitlochry was where our bike tour began three years ago so this is going to be a fun stay for us. Moulin has an inhouse brewery serving some wonderful ales plus it is close to Edradour distillery. It is going to be very difficult to return to the states indeed.

[David]

If you are going to Killin, you are only a few miles (10ish) from the West Highland Way, you can pick it up at Crianlarich. http://www.west-highland-way.co.uk/