Ah paper maps - those long tours when you would spread the map out on the floor, get a high lighter pen or a coloured crayon and draw the route that you wanted to take on the map for the passenger to fold and keep track of current position with a carefully placed finger. Finger placement and map folds had to be adjusted on the move. And occasionally there would be a comment - you should have gone that way. Look - we are here where my finger is, you wanted to go over there - and points out of the window.
It was a well tried system that worked brilliantly.
Well - if you have track and you load that onto the Zumo XT1 or XT2, the green Go! button appears. Tap it and you get exactly the same.
A magenta highlighted route. It never changes.
No instructions are given, you follow the road. The map keeps itself adjusted with your position in the bottom third of the screen.
And it rotates it around so that the map is always facing in the direction you are going.
And if you go away from the route - you get an unpsoken comment - a dotted line and a number which says you need to be going over there, the route is 3 miles in that direction.
If you have never tried this, it really is worth a look. It is so surprisingly relaxing. I tried it without much expectation that it was going to offer anything. I was so wrong. It never changes the route. It never goes wrong. It never nags if you don't do what it tells you. It just provides you with the only information that you need. Where you are on the map, the highlighted road that you wanted to ride on, how far that road is away from your current position, and what general direction you need to be heading. Its up to you how you get there.
And it keeps updating that information as you ride.
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