Walking Satnavs

compmad1

Has anybody ever tried a walking satnav? They had some at Aldi a few months ago, but I didn't take much notice of them. I'd like to do a bit of gentle walking but I'm no good with maps and can get lost.
I have a TomTom 1 for the car which is great, but it was no good for walking in Yorkshire on footpaths.
I've been reading about some Garmin ones. The GPSMAP 60Cx: sounds good but I’m not entirely sure how these work compared to a car satnav. Has anybody used any walking satnavs? Do they plot your route and show you where to go? I don’t need one that doubles as a road map as I’ve got the TomTom. Thanks

ohreally

I've got a Garmin Geko, great little devices. They leave a trail of "breadcrumbs" as your walking which can be used to retrace your steps back to various locations you save while walking.

http://www.haroldstreet.org.uk/members http://www.haroldstreet.org.uk/routes.php?sel=yorkshire - downloadable routes
http://geocache.co.uk/

ormus

if you take the garmin for a walk, dont forget your map!
batteries can fail as can any electronic device.

maps rarely fail. unless you drop them in the river!

fwor

I've got both a Garmin 60Csx and a TomTom. You're right that the TomTom is useless off-road.

AFAIK, none of the Garmin maps will auto-route off-road, as none of the ones that I've looked at consider footpaths to be "routable".

You can get a "GB topo" map for the Garmin which has lots of detail in terms of terrain, but again it's effectively just an image, overlayed onto your current position.

The way I use it is either in conjunction with an OS map, taking coordinates of waypoints off the map and entering them into the GPS, or in conjunction with a PC, creating a route from waypoints on the laptop and then uploading it to the GPS.

Either way is not difficult but a bit tedious, so I don't tend to bother with it unless I'm on longer routes in the mountains. For less difficult terrain I just take it with me as a way of being sure of where I am on an old-fashioned paper map!