Find Piston Head Route?

[five_belliez]

Fastest route, avoid motorways, shortest route - they are all rubbish unless you are a truck driver or ride a moped! I don’t want to simply get to my destination I want to enjoy getting there and I don’t care if it takes twice as long and burns twice the fuel!

Does anyone know of a satnav which has the closest thing to a “Find Piston Head Route” option which;

Avoids motorways
Avoids dual carriageways
Avoids traffic lights
Avoids towns
Avoids busy roads
Avoids really minor roads
but
Plans scenic routes, at the national speed limit where possible

Thanks!

[five_belliez]

Someone must have an idea; this isn't the caravan club forum after all?!

[The Riddler]

Get a map book and plan your own routes rather than relying on a box of tricks?

[waremark]

The Riddler said:

Get a map book and plan your own routes rather than relying on a box of tricks?

It seems that no-one has created nav software for the PH market. Perhaps there is a business opportunity here for an enterprising PH minded programmer?

I would plan the route on Google maps, using the facility to drag the route onto the roads of choice, and then transfer it to a Tomtom using TYRE.

One related point; in the past I have seen sites with itinerary files for good drives, perhaps there should be one on PH.

[109 Bob]

You could always walk.. Sorry.

As above really but I think AutoRoute now has a GPS function that may be useful to you.

[five_belliez]

Thanks for the replies. It sounds like TYRE is still the best option, although I can’t imagine it would be that hard for the software companies to write a different route planning method, but I guess its either not worth it or they haven’t considered it.

The Riddler, don't get me wrong - using a map to plan is great but not exactly convenient for a spontaneous drive to nowhere or if your route is several hundred miles of back roads its so easy to miss a turning.

[five_belliez]

I might have found an answer in the form of Navigon's MyRoutes feature. Here's some more info. Has anyone got any experience of it?

".....MyRoutes is a route planner that considers the users driving style, day of the week, and time of day to play a route that offers personalized guidance. The new feature will be included on all of the firms new product ranges.

The navigation device will display the MyRoutes customized driving route along with two alternate routes for the user to choose from. The feature should be able to route you away from traffic and towards your preferred road type. For instance, if you prefer secondary roads to the highway it will route you that way....."

http://www.i4u.com/article23485.html

http://www.navigon.com/portal/uk/produkte/navigati...

[J_S_G]

five_belliez said:

I might have found an answer in the form of Navigon's MyRoutes feature. Here's some more info. Has anyone got any experience of it?

".....MyRoutes is a route planner that considers the users driving style, day of the week, and time of day to play a route that offers personalized guidance. The new feature will be included on all of the firms new product ranges.

The navigation device will display the MyRoutes customized driving route along with two alternate routes for the user to choose from. The feature should be able to route you away from traffic and towards your preferred road type. For instance, if you prefer secondary roads to the highway it will route you that way....."

http://www.i4u.com/article23485.html

http://www.navigon.com/portal/uk/produkte/navigati...

Problem is, the kind of roads you want are likely to be a mixture of:

• NSL A roads, but not the kind that most people like - rather the ones that take a meandering route
• NSL B roads, but not the ones that most are (i.e. rubbish quality tarmac)

No sat nav is REALLY going to know which of those are the right ones. Or which have amazing views. Or which have stupid cattle crossings every few yards that mean you'd be risking life and limb to press on down them. I'm sure the sat nav can do better than dual carriageway + motorway... but I wouldn't trust it.

What I thought about doing a while back was having a website where PHers, etc. could mark a section of road from start to finish of where's an amazing drive. Give it a rating out of 10, maybe. Allow others to mod this up/down.

Then, once you got enough of these, you could tweak a route-planning application (if you have access to do this to one of them) to favour these roads. But, rather than do that, a manual approach might be FAR more realistic given subtleties around route calculation: plot the route out with sat nav, etc, have a visual online (Google) map around what are the best driving roads, make a call yourself around which "legs" of good road you want, and drag the GM route to follow these, then upload that to TomTom...

[five_belliez]

Unfortuantely I suspect you are correct.