So, booked our holiday cottage in the lakes last night. Excitedly found myself googling mtb routes near it and found that there are some great routes around there.

I’ve downloaded a few that I have found and have also seen that most of them pretty much pass the cottages front door ( :D), but start quite a few miles away.

I’ve never followed a route on my 500 before, but wondered if anyone knows if it it will work if I join a course in the middle of the route rather than at the beginning or will it just be too confusing for it?

It will be fine joining part way through, may well say that you are off course for the first 30 seconds but will then jump to your current location on that course. The course following is only you depicted by an arrow and a line that shows the route, so nothing fancy but still very easy to follow. May be worth taking a map/printout of the route just in case the route doesnt work out etc.

I’m not sure if it will throw its toys out of the pram when you hit the routes finish point. It may realise that you are still riding and jump to the earlier point of the map after congratulating you on finishing or you may need to tell it that you are riding that route again. Hold down the button that looks like a piece of paper while in ride/record mode and it will take you back to the main menu. You can now select the route as per normal and it wont affect or split your current ride.

Cool. Cheers. Yeah, I’ll bring a map as well.

I do it all the time. As above, you might need to start the course again once you reach the end, but that’s about the biggest issue you should have. Though you could encounter problems if you did it in reverse.

Sometimes the route has a tendency to disappear on the 500 too. Just a bug it seems to have. If that happens try zooming out. Usually works for me (I heard it was to do with having no waypoints on the visible screen).

Map is a good idea too on MTB. The routes on the 500 aren’t the easiest things to follow. Not so bad on the road when you only need a rough guide. Not so great when the trail disappears on the middle of the moors, for example…

Cool. Ta.

I think I’ll stick the files into google maps as well, so if it does go a bit pear shaped I can boot that up and see how far off course I have gone. 🙂

Between the garmin, phone and paper map I should hopefully be able to stagger back to the cottage.

butcher – Member
I do it all the time. As above, you might need to start the course again once you reach the end, but that’s about the biggest issue you should have. Though you could encounter problems if you did it in reverse.

Sometimes the route has a tendency to disappear on the 500 too. Just a bug it seems to have. If that happens try zooming out. Usually works for me (I heard it was to do with having no waypoints on the visible screen).

I use gpsies.com to put rides on Garmin. There is an option to evenly space points on the route when you upload it and that seems to solve the problem of the map disappearing…