On the Road Again!

The trials and tribulations of outdated consumer electronics is one that nearly everyone in the world must have! There's a dilemma. Muddle through or dump it and buy the latest bit of kit? I have owned the Garmin Quest sat-nav for the best part of 5 years. Soon after I bought it Garmin announced the Quest 2. It was supposed to be a step forward with post code location searches etc. Instead it was a bit of a white elephant, slow and cumbersome. I have two problems with my Quest. 1) The maps are getting to be out of date. I last bought an upgrade in 2007 and since then I suppose there have been a few miles of roads built in Europe that my Quest doesn't know about. The problem is that from January 2010 the map updates have been withdrawn. I emailed and asked if I could at least upgrade to the 2009 maps as that would be an improvement (and dosh for them!). They replied to say that they couldn't do that as it is in fact the Unlock Codes that have been withdrawn. So I guess...

I managed to get the latest upgrade of Mapsource to work on the new laptop and work through all the Garmin files to get a better route. A week to go and the excitement builds...

Waterproof Cover for Quest , originally uploaded by Devaldinho .

After the unit's failure on the National Rally I wasn't going to take any chances. Once home a hard reset had it fixed and showing the satellites in a few minutes. I then loaded all the maps for the French holiday and we never looked back. As we had to use the car rather than the bike, I was able to take the Toshiba laptop from work with me, complete with Mapsource v9 maps.

The run from the overnight stop at Pete's was a doddle. Sadly the M1 is as boring today as it was last time I slogged up towards Derby! We arrived over two hours before the start of the rally. Before the checkpoint had been set up. Andy arrived about an hour after us and we chatted whilst he noshed through a Burger King speciality. Then everything started to go tits up. My Quest locked up and couldn't find the satellites. Then it simply gave up. Luckily we had maps and both Pete and Andy had the route in their Quest and Zumo 550 respectively. Once on the way I began to feel a little uncomfortable and my head began to hurt and my neck was a bit stiff. By the first checkpoint after the start at Leicester I was beginning to feel unwell and I took a couple of paracetamol tablets. Then we were off and gradually I found my eyesight a bit "tunneled" and this indicated a migraine on its way. I finally dropped so far back the others pulled into a lay...

It works. It works. At the weekend it will get it's proper test on the run to France to visit the Jardins de Valloire. Fingers crossed.

After the total system failure that occurred on the trip up to Suffolk that I mistook for simply the van body shielding, and then the performance that could have ruined the trip to Amsterdam, the Quest went back to Garmin in Hampshire and came back yesterday. Or rather a different one came back yesterday, and that is the problem. It fired up great but cos it is a different unit, it wouldn't let me load any maps. Mapsource works though, I simply can't add maps to the unit and open them. Garmin have been very quick and today I have a new unlock code to type in and see if that works...  Watch this space.