I’m playing around with a Garmin Dakota 20 that I bought second hand with OS GB Discoverer (50k). It records tracks accurately when out on the bike but was planning on using it mainly to plan routes from home and navigate around them.
I’ve got Basecamp installed (on a mac if that makes a difference) and have seen the tutorial for how to create a route but when I actually click routes it seems to take the most roundabout route possible. For example, leaving home I want to cross the dam, then head up a bridleway. It happily plans routes along the roads but as soon as there is an unpaved track or bridleway involved it seems to want to send me some ridiculous alternative and add about 5 miles to the route. Any ideas why it’s doing this?
Any help appreciated!

It won’t route along tracks and bridleways only roads.

That means you’ll need many more Waypoints and that you need to change the Activity Profile to “Direct” (you probably have it on Bicycling or Mountain Biking at the moment).

If you have too many Waypoints in a Route, it’ll exceed the capacity of the Dakota so you may need to draw it as a Track.

It sounds very complex but it’s simple once you get the hang of it.

try bikehike instead. I gave up on basecamp as many of the web based ones are easier to use.

Thanks scotroutes, I’ll give that a go.

jonba – if the above fails I’ll have a look at those.

Cheers both

If you wan to route along paths, you could try some Garmin maps based on OpenStreetMap. Try this website, it has the option to download the maps in Mac OS format, which you can install in Basecamp. http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/

The Talkytoaster maps work well. Basecamp is a bit of a pain though.

Not sure to what level the OS maps are routable, but the ‘Openfietsmap Lite’ map is very good for cycle routes / bridleways / paths (it’s based on Open Streetmap).

You can download it from the link above and install on Basecamp (you could also install it on the Garmin if you wish).

Basecamp still makes the occasional bizarre choice, but you can ‘undo’ and try clicking closer to where you want to go, and it usually gets the message. Switching routing profiles while plotting a route doesn’t seem to work properly, but you can force it into ‘direct’ mode by holding down one of the shift/control/alt keys to ‘bridge’ across a section that it thinks is un-routable (can’t remember which key, and it’s probably different on the Mac, anyway).

There are options within the Basecamp routing profiles which influence the choice of route which may be worth playing with.

Now the important bit:

When you get the route the way you want it, TURN IT INTO A TRACK to send to the Garmin. If you don’t, the Garmin itself will have a crack at picking a route through the points you’ve chosen. If the maps or routing preferences are different (at all) chances are the route gets mangled.

If you use a track, the path over the ground is preserved, and you can happily change maps.