Which map to buy to cycle through France & Spain with Garmin GPSMAP CSX60

Greetings from Vienna Austria,

My first letter on this forum, so be kind :)

Proud owner of a newly purchased Garmin GPSMAP device & have sooooo many
questions
(that I did not find on the FAQ or google)

I am planning to cycle through France & Spain soon & want to use local roads
(where possible)

I could create a route in google earth but I would still like to have the
maps as back up.The Atlantic
what I have is too basic. So I presume my only choice is the Garmin City Nav
Europe ? can I trace
my route over that map with my map source? stupid question maybe, but on the
garmin site they note

To purchase a topo for France & one for spain blows my budget so as
mentioned the Nav europe is
my only alternative right ?

Appreciate your help

Thanks in advance
Simon

Grüße von England!

You will find the Garmin GPSmap 60CSx is a good choice for your purpose and
City Nav Europe mapping will provide most of what you want. The mapping will
not tell you anything about about the height, so you may want to use some
paper maps to avoid choosing mountainous routes by mistake. The GPSmap 60CSx
is not a preloaded device,

Get enough 2 Gigabyte cards to provide the mapping for your whole route and
load the maps onto the cards in advance. Change cards on the route as
necessary. You may find that maps for your whole route will fit on a single
card. (I have yet to see City Nav 2008, so can't tell.) Buy two sets of NiMH
batteries and take a battery charger (mains or solar powered).

Gute Reise!

Servus Mark,

Thanks for the quick feed back. I'll purchase the Nav Europe tomorrow & load
up on
SD cards.

I presume using map source that I will be able to copy paste (overlay)
my preferred route onto Nav Europe right ?

I would also really like to create a "Track log" of my tour. It will touch
around 2000km
could I have an issue with memory ?

Thanks for your support

Gruß aus Wien
Simon

If you set your 60CSx to save track to the track to the micro SD card you
will not have any memory capacity problems. Each day a new tracklog file
will be created on the card at a maximum of several hundred k bytes each. I
also think that you will easily get all of France and Spain onto one 2GB
card. especially if you get the NT version of City Nav.

Simon

As Dick has mentioned the 60CSx uses micro SD cards, so don't get an SD card
for it! I find that the type that is sold with the micro SD card held in a
carrier shaped like an SD card is helpful, as my laptop has an SD slot.

You will probably be sold City Navigator Europe V9. If so, you should unlock
and register it and immediately ask Garmin for the upgrade DVD to City
Navigator 2008 and this should be free.

Yes, you can build your routes on City Navigator maps on your PC in
MapSource. You may need to use via points to force it to use the local
roads. I suggest that you split it into one route for each day. You can then
transfer the routes to the 60CSx (not the micro SD card). You should
practise this procedure before your trip.

If you select the option to save tracks on the micro SD card, the 60CSx will
save them as GPX files. You can copy the GPX files to the PC and study them
with MapSource or other programs; a simple way to do this is to connect the
card to the PC; alternatively you can do it using a USB cable between 60CSx
and PC and choosing the right option in the 60CSx connection screen.

There is a group for Garmin GPS receivers at news:alt.satellite.gps.garmin
and it is better to pose any further Garmin-specific questions there. I have
cross posted this response to that group and you should look there for
further contributions. You will also find that most users seem to prefer
news posts to read from the top down.

Mark I