I bought a Garmin Edge 800 package last year which included heart rate monitor, cadence sensor and UK/Europe road maps. I always thought the maps looked a bit bland, and there were a lot of roads I ride on in North Wales which weren't on the maps !
I looked into buying an OS Discovery map but according to the Garmin website a micro SD card with such a map is £199 !
So I looked into some other options. In particular there were a couple of useful blogs here and here. The second of these blogs directed me to the following website: http://talkytoaster.info/ukmaps.htm.
I happened to have a spare 4 GB micro SD card (from an old mobile phone) so I made sure there was nothing on it, created a folder called GARMIN (I did this when the micro SD card was in a card reader but I guess you could do it if you had put it into the Garmin Edge). Then I downloaded a UK Open Source Map which had contours and was routable (i.e. it should still work as a sat-nav). The download site is at:
http://talkytoaster.info/120907-British-Isles+Contours-Routable-GMAPSUPP.zip
It's a 500 MB or so file so may take some time if you have a slow connection.
Once this was copied to a sensible place on my computer, I unzipped the file, and renamed it just GMAPSUPP (it should be an IMG file so filename should be GMAPSUPP.IMG). I then simply copied this into the folder I had created on the micro SD card, unplugged the micro SD card from my Garmin (the one with the UK/Europe maps in) and put the newly created SD card in.
I tried it out today on a route into North Wales from Chester - it is much much better than the other map. All the small roads in North Wales on the route I did were in the map OK. There are also maps available for other countries.
It may not be as good as the OS Discovery maps but considering those cost £199 and the map I got above was free I'm pretty happy with it.
I looked into buying an OS Discovery map but according to the Garmin website a micro SD card with such a map is £199 !
So I looked into some other options. In particular there were a couple of useful blogs here and here. The second of these blogs directed me to the following website: http://talkytoaster.info/ukmaps.htm.
I happened to have a spare 4 GB micro SD card (from an old mobile phone) so I made sure there was nothing on it, created a folder called GARMIN (I did this when the micro SD card was in a card reader but I guess you could do it if you had put it into the Garmin Edge). Then I downloaded a UK Open Source Map which had contours and was routable (i.e. it should still work as a sat-nav). The download site is at:
http://talkytoaster.info/120907-British-Isles+Contours-Routable-GMAPSUPP.zip
It's a 500 MB or so file so may take some time if you have a slow connection.
Once this was copied to a sensible place on my computer, I unzipped the file, and renamed it just GMAPSUPP (it should be an IMG file so filename should be GMAPSUPP.IMG). I then simply copied this into the folder I had created on the micro SD card, unplugged the micro SD card from my Garmin (the one with the UK/Europe maps in) and put the newly created SD card in.
I tried it out today on a route into North Wales from Chester - it is much much better than the other map. All the small roads in North Wales on the route I did were in the map OK. There are also maps available for other countries.
It may not be as good as the OS Discovery maps but considering those cost £199 and the map I got above was free I'm pretty happy with it.
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