Better by Bike-easy route planning in Bristol

This week I have to go to a conference on the other side of the city, not a major deal but I'm pretty hopeless at navigating by map these days (lack of practice I suppose) and as I have a sat-nav on the bike, I mint as well use it. Anyway, whilst registering for Bristol's Biggest Bike ride a couple of weeks ago, I came across this site which allows you to plan your route across Bristol using the start and finish post codes. Even better, it allows you to download a GPX file. Sweet, so here is a "how to" for planning your journey across Bristol:
Step one
Enter the start and finish postcode and hit go.


The page will disappear for a few seconds before coming back with a dialogue box saying its planning your route. A few seconds later and voila! Your route appears, you can view a map or a printer friendly version.


Step two
If you look on the right hand side under the route profile, you will see the option to download a GPX file. The associated file has too many waypoints for my Garmin 705 so I loaded it into Garmin BaseCamp and then used this software to generate a new route. I uploaded this to Garmin Connect (a simple one click operation from BaseCamp) and then used the export function to generate a GPX file.


Step three
Having cleaned up the GPX file, I loaded it onto the Garmin (plug in Garmin, wait for it to mount, navigate to the GPX folder and drop in the file) and checked that it would work by setting the Garmin to navigate the file. Success! The file appears as a line on the map


and as a series of instructions in the list view


All I have to do now is switch on the Garmin, set it to navigate and follow the instructions as the unit beeps at me before a turn. I like it.
You don't have to use the Garmin BaseCamp/Garmin Connect route, you could use GPSies, GPSbabel, MapMyRide etc to do the same thing, I haven't had to lean up a GPX file before so did it using the Garmin software as it’s (possibly) more likely to work as intended.
The site is Bristol only but I hope other cities do a similar site, it makes getting round a lot easier and sure beats looking at an A-Z every two minutes.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad