navigation

For a trip like this, navigation is everything, and I've already proved that my sense of direction's far from perfect.
We both had compasses, Martin carried maps covering the Lake District and the North York Moors.

I had my phone.


I always knew my Nokia 5800 did a lot of stuff, but on this trip it blew me away.

I've got Alex Fischer's AFTrack software on my phone.

I loaded Ordnance Survey maps from Bing and calibrated them using satsig.net. It was time consuming, but very worthwhile.

I cable tied a cheap silicon holder to my handlebars so I could see the screen when I was riding, and,

HEY PRESTO!

I had satellite navigation which told us exactly where we were and what direction we were travelling. It even told me what speed I was doing while playing a selection of MP3s. The holder gave good shock resistance, it never fell off, and I was able to take the phone out easily on the rough off-road sections or when I wanted to make a phone call (yes, you can even use the Nokia 5800 XPressMusic to make phone calls!). A fully charged battery lasted all day, but I started every day with two charged up. Just in case.

I would never rely on just a gps for navigation; too many things can go wrong, but it turned out to be an amazing setup and saved us a lot of faffing about on windy mountain tops.