If you need a guide who’s not such a good rider, give me a job.

I can guarantee entertainment in the form of.

1, riding into peat bogs and going OTB

2, riding into peat bogs on command and going OTB

3, slipping on wet decking whilst holding a sugar bowl full of hot tea and landing on a pointy rock covering myself in tea flavoured caramel….

I can safely think i made things memorable on the particular riding holiday!

Sorry Sharki, it sounds like you might have a sense of direction 😉

I thought you were very useful on that trip sharki. In a sort of ” here’s how not to do it ” kind of way 😉

How do you go wrong with a gps – blindly following it! I have seen this a few times

With a GPS and a map (and possibly a compass) you cant exactly go wrong anywhere. I’ve never yet had mine go out of signal, despite thick tree cover, for more than a few hundred metres and you can happily blindly follow any route that has been decently constructed. I’ve stolen loads from bikely and just headed out to ride them!

2 GPS stories (both on boats, neither cycling related, i dont tust them)

First, me steering, my dad navigating, GPS dies (battery fault, not flat, just exploding), had we a foddiest where we were, not a clue! Now unless your conciencious nad get the map out and make a cross every 5 minutes a GPS can get you lost in the middle of nowhere very quickly.

Second, me navigating, dad steering. Follows the GPS perfectly, despite me telig him that i’ve checked our positio usin a compas and the chart and we’re definately heading for the ground. I hate saying i told you so, but unless your 100% sure you got the waypoints right, following them blidly can be more trouble than you were looking for.

thisisnotaspoon – Sea is a slightly different matter but ….GPS battery fault is why I carry at least 2 spare sets, thats an obvious one. As for following waypoints – unless you’re a complete tard you can input OS waypoints (or read back a track you already did) to within a few metres. When out in the hills I never see more than 20ft repeatability error on riding the same course time and time again. There is absolutely no reason for the GPS waypoint following to cause any problems.

I used my GPS to plot routes down the alps and follow them next day – they were accurate to within a metre or two. I’ve used it to trace my steps back while following a map route and taking the wrong fork – no probs. I spent the weekend using one while hiking over the area around Nevis, it matched the map to within a few steps.

I find GPSs with inbuilt maps are sometimes a bit screwy and place you miles from where the road is for example (tomtom), but a normal basic etrex never fails me and lasts 8hours plus on 2AAs in 5 C temps.

Just lob a waypoint at every major turn or bit thats difficult to identify and remember, if following a dot-to-dot rather than a previously traced route, that the line to the next waypoint could point down the wrong branch depending on relative positions so make sure you add extra waypoints to account for non-obvious curves.

Amazingly over the years my map and compass have never failed me, generally speaking the clues to where you are are often contained on the map.

Sounds like your guide is a muppet. I’d be very scared if he ‘guided’ me off a GPS, surely the point of guiding is they know where they are and where they go ?

Hey perhaps he could come and work for us in Belgium, I’ve a worker here who is supposed to visit all of his shops in his area once every cycle (approximately every 7 weeks). I’ve been working with him for the last two months and I’ve found over half of his 225 shops on his route have not been visited for the past two years!

Oh and his director isn’t much better, I’ve sat there this week and cross referenced all of the shops in his area and found that the director hasn’t routed over 30 shops, so they’ve not been visited at all!

Oh and because he’s been allowed to get away with not doing his job for so long, our lawyers say its now acceptable practice so we can not fire him for it.

well 227 customers in a 7 week cycle = 6+ sales calls per day based on a 5 day week – probably less than 5 days if assume friday pm is out and some time needed for admin
maybe your worker was focussing on the ones that he/she believed gave the most potential – in a culture where business is personal need to determine if tossing it off over coffee with old mates or working on what will give best return

LOL at Spoony 🙄 Navigate at Sea using a GPS (or Chartplotter etc) = Fail recepe. I ALWAYS used old skool navigation methods when sailing in coastal waters (fix based EP etc) and offshore (DR). Mark on Chart even at 10 min intervals if a tricky area. GPS as backup reference only.

i like the three strikes and your are out rule.

did you explain that to him after his first strike?

antigee I wish it were the case. The only problem being is 95% of the customers he’s not visited are Flemish and he’s a Wallone! Its more a case of not going to them because he doesn’t want to talk to them.

In the UK we work to a 9 calls a day cycle the work we actually undertake during those visits is over 7 times as much.

He’s going round tossing over the coffee with all his french mates and sod the rest of the customers.

Since I’ve been working him with him his call rates gone upto the 6 calls a day and his actual returns have more than doubled, but it is only because I am actually sitting in his vehicle and making him visit those stores whilst holding his hand. As soon as I leave him alone he reverts back to his previous ways and carries on regardless.

antigee I wish it were the case. The only problem being is 95% of the customers he’s not visited are Flemish and he’s a Wallone! Its more a case of not going to them because he doesn’t want to talk to them.

agree if returns doubled in 2 months then not focussing on right things and if calls uk is 9/day then even allowing cultural difference…one last point Flemish v Wallone is it that Flemish customers won’t see him? – have run sales teams in Netherlands, Belgium and Scotland and the Green and Orange divide is pretty strong not that crunching numbers is wrong just that at some point they can hit the great divide

Poor guy@guide lol

Then again crap wage crap people.

Blame the manager ;OP

Nope its him not wanting to visit those stores, we’ve had no problems at all when I’ve made him go to the stores. He speaks enough Flemish to get himself understood and to service and clean our machines and then replenish the shelves. I understand the divide issues a little too, as I’ve worked in Northern Ireland, Scotland and now Belgium.

The company when they took him on offered to pay for Flemish lessons for upto 2 years for him to learn the language to a reasonable level, he never took them up on that offer.

There are cultural differences and we aren’t expecting him to work to the same levels as the UK, but as a conservative estimate I reckon he’s been barely working for more than an average of 3 hours a day and for that he’s earning 30,000 euros a year. About 40 euros an hour before tax.