Garmin Maps and Courses

[Deleted]

Hello, I've only recently got myself a Garmin HU and wanted to know how other people go about adding maps or courses to their garmins. For example adding the Saturday ride route, out towards biggin hill. I've read up on google to download gpx files and then add them on?

I'd ideally like some maps of the small back roads of South East London out towards Kent etc or any South London based maps. What's the best way to do this?

Thanks

Tom

[samcrossley]

Openstreetmaps can be downloaded for free.
Here is a good source (also useful when your scope grows a bit wider than Kent)

garmin.openstreetmap.nl/

Select the tiles you want, and you get an email link when they're ready to download.

Online route planners eg ridewithgps, bikely e.t.c. often give you a link to save your track/route/course directly to a plugged in Garmin (especially the newer models)

[Andy Davidson]

Hey tom, there will be multiple threads on this forum (look under the rides thread especially) where people have shared Gpx files you can download. Also I'd add that If you are a strava premium member you can follow club members and copy their routes and download them. Strava also offers an excellent route planner function that uses popularity of segments to help you create routes that not only go where you want but use all those lovely lanes that are popular with local riders. Happy exploring!

[justingillott]

When you copy route files onto your garmin save it to the "new files folder" on the garmin. The garmin does the rest. Well the 800 and 810 version do.

[karimkanji]

This is a really good site to help you get the most out of your Garmin and in particular how to set it up so you can easily follow preset routes:

www.scarletfire.co.uk/foolproof-course-navigation-on-the-garmin-edge-800/

[Andy Davidson]

And here are some good routes out of london to get you started: www.strava.com/local/uk/london/cycling/routes

[Sara Barman]

Dc Rainmaker has good explanation if you Google him and free maps Garmin.

[Sara Barman]

If you record a club ride you can then save it (as a course I think) to repeat in future should your memory fail you.

[Deleted]

Thanks to everyone for their helpful advice here, think I've managed to load the UK segments onto the Garmin and seems to be working well.

[hectorkidds]

When it comes to creating routes on your PC it's worth really getting into the detail. I have found when using the route creator in Garmin connect that point to point routing and snapping to roads is better using google maps, but, it will really want you to use back streets and cycle paths, and the odd bridle path, so you need to check every km and edit. If you want to take a specific route, e.g. through a town centre worth switching to OpenStreetMap which seems to be less keen to send you up random paths and alleys. Save your route often, it crashes a bit for me.

Lastly, keep your head unit clean, I had a load of courses and all my rides since late December on my 820, it was getting sluggish and quite annoying... But deleted everything after it crashed today, and its running back at full speed now.