Euro road trip, UK to Greek islands

[Getragdogleg]

In May the Wife and I are planning a month long driving holiday, we plan to leave Penzance on the first of May and leave the UK at plymouth, We are then going to go take our time through France and visit lots of places and then go along the coast towards Italy, down through italy and over to Greece on another ferry, we plan on ending up on Kefalonia for a couple of weeks before driving a more direct route back home, preferably involving mountain scenery and a few tunnels.

Since we will be camping all the way along our trip (we will be driving our Chevy Astro van) we need to get a sat nav system that is capable of UK and euro mapping including Greece and the islands, I would like to get a system that has campsites on it as we dont plan booking ahead, just see where the wind takes us, Fuel stations listings are vital as well, the van is a V6 4.3litre but we are running LPG as well.
Toll listings and such like would be handy.

I have never had a sat nav before, I think a spend of about £200 to £300 is likely to be the budget, not wanting something that needs monthly subscription but I can update via the net/laptop which will be coming too, hopefully i can find wifi spots on the move.

sorry for the idiot nature of this post but i really have no experience of sat navs !

[Heaveho]

Hi, I do this trip quite regularly, as I have a place in Crete, and I use a Garmin, which I've been very happy with. However, unless the game's moved on, I'm not aware of a satnav that can reliably navigate on the islands, only on mainland Greece. As I say though, the Garmin has been superb generally, and we regularly use it in place of the factory fit item in the Lexus, which, by comparison, is crap.

Enjoy the trip!

[Schtum]

Heaveho said:

However, unless the game's moved on, I'm not aware of a satnav that can reliably navigate on the islands, only on mainland Greece.

Then I suspect that, as you say, the game has moved on. I've just checked the Greek Islands coverage on Garmin City Navigator Europe NT 2010.20 and it looks pretty good. If you want to know about specific coverage, let me know and I'll post up a screen-shot of any areas you might like to view.

[Getragdogleg]

Thanks for the help, I will be looking closely at the Garmin as described above.

Am I right in thinking Garmins have moved on a lot in the last few years ? one of my drivers had a Garmin about 3 years ago and soon went out and bought a TomTom, he ran them both and said that the tomtom was better for finding addresses and places to stop, he sold the garmin on and just uses the tomtom, I have always relied on the fact i know how to read a map and normally know where I am going so did not pay attention at the time so I did not see what each system can do.

He still swears by the tomtom, although he has had problems with the software.