Not too long ago, I picked up a Garmin 1030 cycle computer. This has a larger screen and also displays maps. So I’ve been experimenting with various services for drawing those routes and downloading onto the cycle computer.

The Garmin unit has an automatic mapping – that works similar to Google Maps and will pick out a route. What I have found however is that those routes tend to “squiggle” a lot as it picks up many small bike paths and similar routes. I like taking a more direct route, particularly if I am cycling at off hours like an early morning.

There are services like Strava, MapMyRide and RideWithGPS that let you plot out a route and adjust it on the PC before transferring the route down to the Garmin unit. These work somewhat better, though in all three cases seems like you need a paid subscription to do this with many routes. So I experimented with free version of RideWithGPS to see how well route planning works – before downloading to the Garmin. Overall, seemed to do what I needed – so may look at a one-year subscription for my cycle trip.

The other part of the equation is the cues and other hints the GPS unit provides when you are on the road. My Garmin Edge unit will beep and show a map when a designated turn comes close. It can then shift back to different screen once past the turn. With an auto-plotted route in the Garmin it can be annoying since you don’t always know how many of these turns are coming up. However, if I have already created the route and downloaded it, I find this to work better.

This weekend I put all these pieces together. I created a route using RideWithGPS and adjusted it for fairly direct cycling. I downloaded this route to my Garmin and cycled to Bastrop State Park where I met friends for an evening of campfire and hot dogs and overnight camping before catching a ride back with my bike. The Garmin worked as expected.

The last part is also using a plugin so I can include activities recorded in Strava onto a blog post such as the one below.

[activity-id=8703090894]