On the Road Again!

A couple of weeks to go before we set off for deepest France and Spain. The problem when trying to plan a route down is that in the end, there aren't really that many places to cross from France into Spain, and vice-versa. When you are pressed for time on the outward journey to avoid tolls limits the choices to get from the channel port, either ferry or train.  If the aim is to cross at the Mediterranean end of the Pyrenees than the A75 comes up on all route planners. Also Paris site like a fat spider in the middle of its web.  Getting around always poses a problem.  The eastern route on the N104/A104 is pretty much the route you get given by Google Maps and many of the route planners that use Google Maps! Oddly, MyRouteApp decided to go to the west this time from Formerie.  I guess if we had chosen to stay at a different aire then the route might have been substantially different. Route avoiding the worst of Paris! Usually to get a route you want you have to add som...

The route southwards in France is pretty much sorted now.   With three stops at Camping-Car Park (CCP) aires planned,  I decided to book the first night in advance. By the time we arrive in France it will be around 2pm.  No doubt we'll want to get some shopping done on the way.   I have chosen the CCP aire at Formerie as the first stop. It's around 100 miles from Eurotunnel. It's only got 6 emplacements so booking might be a good idea. Just in case.. Photo by me!  Taken in May 2024. To book in advance rather than taking pot luck, you need to pay for the " PACK'PRIVILEGES" subscription.  Mine runs out on the 4th October. So I was able to pre-book this stop and if necessary, the following two.  It's debatable whether it's worth the €29 to buy as it doesn't really give anything but pre-booking.  It may be worth it for high season. With the app installed on the phones we can check the area and choose an aire that has plenty ...

The routes my brother plans down to the minutest details with places to eat, fuel up and see sights have been in the TomTom 410 for weeks if not months. With 2 and a bit days to go there's a change!  I have spent a good hour on MyRouteApp trying to get it to change the first waypoint from the ferry terminal to the Shuttle terminal in France! It kept coming up to say that it couldn't plan a route as there were no roads! Finally it worked. Now I have to get it from the phone to the unit.  My phone needs to be connected to the TomTom by bluetooth tethering. It needs to be done now as once we set the wheels in France it cuts off.  It's a very stupid idea. So I have to sort it before I set off at 7am (at the latest) on Thursday!

The navigation upgrade hasn't been doing too well.  I spent a few days mapping the early days of our upcoming trip to Spain into the app before I paid for the upgrade. What the **** have I done? It didn't work.  I have already blogged about the offline mapping problem. The maps wouldn't download to the SD card in my phone. This was fixed, in part, when I tested to see if the maps would download to the internal memory. It's not the solution I would choose, but I have enough internal storage to cover it. The next problem has been the sound. The mapping works very well. I can plan routes with multiple waypoints and download to the phone and then navigate. It works really well. Except there's no voice. Why? Most of my tests have been done in the car. We have a Nissan Juke. And there lies the problem. On Sunday I did a test in the motorhome. The sound worked. Just a short run to Dover to get LPG. We had barely left the house when the voice chimed up.  At the time I was h...

I had some replies to my ticket logged with MyRouteApp and also on their users forum.  None of them were all that useful until around 10pm BST tonight. See previous blog linked below... "Have you tried installing a map, any map, onto the phone and not using the SD card....?" The answer to that was no I haven't. I use the SD card on the Motorola G50 for music and photo storage. Anything taken on the phone camera goes to the SD card.  I have around 60GB of music there that is an amalgamation of Amazon Music downloads and the entire iTunes library off the laptop.  I have no problem downloading from Amazon Music if and when I buy a new album on MP3. Photos are stored without any errors. So it never occurred to me that there could be a problem.  There obviously is a problem though, as I tried to install "England" using the menu in the MyRouteApp. I switched off the SD card option in the app.   Instead of it flickering on the download arrow it...

With all my planning I tend to not add in fuel stops to my routes. Neill does as he usually tours with his friend Patrick. Patrick has a Honda Shadow with a smaller fuel tank range. I have been through my outward trip and added some fuel stops.  Vera is currently averaging 50mpg dead on the Fuelly app and this is mixed riding in town and on the motorways when I do tend to push the speed limit to it's outer envelope.   With Covid-19 being rife (and cases on the increase!) across the EU countries and Channel crossing fares being a complete and utter rip-off, I haven't been away to test what sort of mileage I can expect "over there"! With a 20.5 litre tank I am looking at around 170-180 miles between fill-ups to ensure a margin of error. So far I haven't done more that about 149 miles on a tank.  With a non-toll route in each direction there will be some fairly low speed limits, but there are sections of non-toll motorways that can be experienced, and speeds might ge...

On the way out I have planned the no toll route that basically is get to Rouen or nearby on the free sections of the motorways and then head across to join the N10 (or whatever it is numbered in each départmente) and head south or south-west.  What about coming back?  Do I want to tread the same path? Or seek out a new one. First step fire up MyRouteApp and select Google Maps. I am currently booked into the El Cid Hotel in Morella. It's about 43 miles from the circuit at Motorland Aragón.  What if I change the El Cid booking and pack my meagre belongings into my panniers on the Sunday morning and head to the track and then use that 43 miles to head off to a new hotel on the way home?   Something to ponder? For now I am assuming I will be solo on this trip. If my brother Neill decides to join me then it will halve the cost of the hotels, and I'll have to change the sleeping arrangements at each hotel!! So what does MyRouteApp come up with. Well. It depends on the...

I have been looking at the non-toll route to the El Cid hotel that will get me/us there on the Friday afternoon.  Having decided on Option 1, ride both ways, I now have to decide how long to take and how long Claire will suffer me being away.  I was looking at a week away or in reality 8 days - two overnights out, three at the GP end, and then two nights back.  If Neill comes along he might want to take longer and that will need some debate. I have booked the hotels in twin bedded rooms but if it is a solo trip, then I will see about changing to a double room and have a big bed just for me.... It's pretty much the same route I took way back in the 80's when I rode with my ex-partner to Biarritz for a week in a villa owned by a colleague at Reuters. We wanted to avoid the toll motorways and what was then called the N10 went all the way from the outskirts of Paris (where we got lost near Versailles) to the Spanish border. Back then I was on the Kettle aka Suzi Triplo. I hav...

This coming Sunday is our monthly Meldrew's breakfast meeting.  The plan is to meet a little earlier than usual and head over to the Waterside Cafe near Hawkhurst for an arrival at about 1030am. As the weather has turned decidedly winter-like recently the run is weather dependent.  If it's too shitty we'll go the old HQ at the Blue and White Cafe in Mersham on the A20.. I plotted a route on MyRouteApp and it looks like a 59 minute ride across country.  The quickest route is to go along the coast to Rye and then turn northwards but we have a part-way meet in Hamstreet.  Putting a waypoint in actually knocks four miles off but also increases the time but only by a few minutes. I need to get the LS2 Bluetooth charged up and connected to TomTom.  I will also try and see it the "Yamaha My Ride" app will work this time on my phone.  I made the changes that their tech support suggested and have yet to try it out. Fingers crossed it's not pissing down or worse, fr...

I missed the run to Hinckley and the visitor centre experience at Triumph due to sickness. I picked up a stomach bug that lasted for four days!  Saturday to Tuesday.  Two days off work and my weekend ruined. Even more of a pisser was that the two days off work meant I had a train ticket that was wasted as there are no refunds! The next event will be the Allied Memorial Remembrance Ride to Madingley Cemetery on the outskirts of Cambridge. It's July 6th this year.  I am probably going to be Billy No-Mates again but it means I can go at my own pace and not have to ride as a group until we get to the rendezvous at  the services on the A14 to the west of Cambridge.  I have planned a route up to the services and from their to the cemetery and home will have to be from memory!  ;) Last year I thought of visiting the NAAFI canteen that is open at a former WW2 fighter station at North Weald.  In the end I missed it as I was in a hurry to get home.  I mi...

I have been looking at places to go when we are in Orlando and Weston.  Neither of us are great theme park lovers so Orlando might not be the greatest choice for us to vacation! But, there are other things. We go for the R&R and the weather.  Early April at home will be showery and maybe around 12°C and the projected temps are 27°C in Florida.  Unlike last time when we went in the wake of the hurricanes and it was wert a lot of the time. I have been busy looking at non-theme park things to do and mapping them in MyRouteApp.  I have the US maps as well as Europe in the TomTom and that will go with me as hand luggage. So far I have a few botanical gardens and of course Gatorland mapped and primed.  Once there we can se what else we want to see/do. From Weston we have some old favourites to check out plus a trip to the Keys for an overnight.  Hotels are arm and leg expensive but we have one with good reviews in Marathon.  Only 15 days from now we will...

I have been using Tyre  for a number of years to plan routes and send them to my TomTom GPS units that we have successfully used on the bike and in the cars for quite a few years.  Last year there was a bit of a problem and Tyre ceased to work with Google Maps.  This proved to be a massive problem and although they managed to recover to use Open Source maps it doesn't work anywhere near as well. So we had a look at MyRouteApp . Another Dutch production that works on a Windows PC as it is web based and also supports an app that runs on my Android phone.  Neill used it to create in and out routes on our 2016 trip the Czech for MotoGP. I created an account back then too to receive the shared routes but haven't touched it until recently.  He has created routes for the upcoming Devallboys trip to Le Mans for the MotoGP in May. So I have given it another go. On my part I have started looking at routes to get from airport to hotel and to the different ...