Garmin 2610

From: Barry-  UK

I have had my Garmin 2610 GPS for some 18 months now - I am just about getting used to it. There is nothing about these units that is intuitive. You have to read the book and practice.

Once set up and the route inserted, they are not only useful but also a bit of fun. There is something satisfying about riding through an unknown area, but actually knowing the name of the road you are on and the name of the next road on your right - or left! This is all shown on the display, that changes scale to suit the circumstances. In town it is a street atlas, on a fast A road, you can see half a county. These scales are all manually adjustable - even with a gloved finger.

As with paper maps, the maps on the GPS are not always up to date. If you let the GPS take over your mind, you may well find yourself riding through the middle of a town rather than taking the new by-pass. Keep your eye on the road numbers.

Follow the new by-pass and the Garmin will tell you that you are ‘off route - recalculating’. Then some 5 seconds later it will try to put you back on the original route by telling you to turn left/right, or even make a U-turn. If you continue to ignore it, it will keep recalculating and try to get you back on the old route. Eventually, when you get to the end of the by-pass and rejoin the original route, it will continue as if nothing had happened.

I find them very useful in ‘tracking mode’. This will keep a record of where you have been, in very precise detail - height variation, speed over sections. This information can be downloaded onto the base map on your PC. The route can be adjusted and reloaded back into the GPS unit as a new route. This can be useful when planning club/group rides.

The ‘shortest route’ option is interesting. I did not know there were so many roads with grass growing along the middle in my part of the country!

Whilst the maps of most of the Western European countries are good - including town plans. Once you get into what was Eastern Europe - Poland, Czech/Slovak republics, Hungary, etc. All you get is the main roads. Even Spain, Portugal and Greece are poorly served in some areas and very few town plans.

I did notice one strange phenomenon in Poland. Whilst the B road I was on was not on the map - on the display it appeared if I was riding across open countryside - the wording actually told me the number of the road I was on and my heading. This suggests to me, that the map information is in the GPS unit, but has yet to be configured with the GPS information.

There are now many GPS units on the market. Like anything else, you tend to get what you pay for. I am not too happy with those with built in memory, especially if it is not solid state. There does seem to be a move towards removable solid state memory - Flash cards - this does allow for the maximum flexibility on map and route storage.

Mounting them can be a problem and may well call for a bit of ingenuity. I have found the best place is directly in front of me - just above the speedo. At one time, I did mount them slightly to one side, in my peripheral vision. I found this distracting. I have now resolved the problem on both my Varadero and BMWR1100R. I am sure you can sort something out for your bike.