How to...

People often worry about getting lost whilst out riding in new areas, particularly in foreign countries and to be fair route-finding (even with a quality guidebook like Bikefax) can be a complete nightmare when riding off the beaten track. And aint it a shame that the virgin territory and fabulous unspoilt riding is usually balanced in equal measures by vague turnings and unmarked junctions.

One answer to this is to take a few minutes to load up the GPS with the route. You can then either follow the GPS to the letter or just use it now and again to check on your location. Most GPS units are available with a handlebar mount (www.gpsw.co.uk), though the bigger units do tend to bounce around a bit and switch themselves off with the vibrations. One way round this is to put a little bit of card between the battery and the cover to stop the batteries jumping around. Or if you havent already got a GPS unit, the Garmin Edge which has been specifically designed for use on a bike, is worth taking a look at.

Pretty much everyone knows how a GPS works these days; a signal is sent up from the unit to a number of navigational satellites orbiting the earth, bounced back and then some clever little calculations by trigonometry are made to determine the relationship of everything else in the world. Clever huh! Of course a few things can block this signal and cause irregularities, such as tall buildings, lots of trees and bad weather, but on the whole in a foreign place and in a foreign country they can be an invaluable navigational tool.

These days we do just about all of our research for the guidebooks with a GPS strapped to the front of the bike and when the GPS isnt being used to plot the route, we spend endless amounts of time downloading routes to sites like Google Earth and pouring over maps in search of secret singletrack. If you'e bought your GPS unit in the UK, it will have come already set up for use in this country and to be able to use it just as accurately abroad you will have to go through a few things in the Set Up menu in order to reformat it for the country you are visiting. Each country has its own map datum which you will need to input so that the unit can make the correct calculations to display your position accurately. You can usually found this written somewhere on the paper map of the region or you unit may have a list pre-stored.

The other piece of data you will need to input is the Map Zone. As the world is not flat, the unit will need to know whether you are in the northern or southern hemisphere and where exactly in that hemisphere you are located.

Follow these simple steps to set up your GPS for use in Spain and France
Turn the GPS on and go to the Main Menu
Choose SET UP
In Set Up go to Location Format (also known as projection)
In Location Format, choose:  UTM
You will also need to set the Map Datum
For Map Datum choose:  European 1950
A full list of map datum for around the world can be found at garmin.com . Once this is done, the grid references you get displayed on your GPS will correspond with the grid references displayed along the top and sides of the local maps and you will get an accurate read out on locations.

Digital mapping for Spain and France

There are a number of options available for viewing your routes on screen. You can go for an all singing and dancing full mapping software for that country such as Memory Map or CompeGPS. CompeGPS (www.compegps.com/) have just brought out a Spain Topo, which has 1:25,000 mapping for the whole of Spain and for the French Alps (including Morzine & Portes du Soleil, and Memory Map have teamed up with the French map makers, IGN, to produce a number of regional maps at a 1:25,000 scale.

There are several fee map management packages available. GPS Utility is a freeware mapping tool which allows you to scan in a paper map, calibrate this to the local co-ordinates and then view your track over the top of this. This is quite a useful package, especially for parts of the world where digital mapping doesnt yet exist as you can scan and calibrate any paper map.

Mapsource is another inexpensive or free package. This normally comes as part of the bundle with a Garmin unit and allows you to view the track and its data on a very simple basemap, but you will need to buy some mapping software to go with it if you want to see any kind of detail.

A subscription to Google Earth Plus allows you to upload your route logs and view them as tracks. This is fun as you get to see your routes in a real landscape.

If you are using more generic software for the country, such as GPSU or Mapsource, to display your tracks correctly on your computer, you will also need to input the location format and datum to whichever programme you are using. This can usually be found in PREFERENCES.

Posted by: Sue Savege