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When finding our way around Europe we use several things as they all aid us to find our way and hopefully not get lost.

Microsoft Autoroute

We only started using this program in 2011 when Guy and Fran [English people we met in Portugal introduced it to us. Thank you] since then we use it to plan our routes and also put our POI’s on it. It has detailed maps of most of Europe and has the ability to zoom in to the individual streets and also zoom out to give an overall picture. We have a large range of POI’s which gives us locations of places to stay, LPG filling points, McDonalds for free Wi-Fi and other peoples wild camping spots and other useful sites. If you are unsure as to how to put POI’s onto Autoroute I have made a small tutorial. I hope that it is of some help.                                                                                          How to install  POI’s to Autoroute.

OsmAnd+

This is an App that was recommended to us by Clyde and Anna friends who we have travelled with in Morocco and Turkey [Thank you]. It is an android App that we have loaded onto our Samsung Tablet. It cost us about 6€ and it is the best money we have spent. Once the program is installed you then download the maps of the countries you are going to be travelling in. This also has the ability to zoom in and out to give you a street prospective or a larger picture of where you are going. Our Tom-tom has limited maps in Europe while the Osmand has whatever country you need. It also works similar to a sat-nav working offline. You can plan a route and it will give you directions a well. In countries where the TomTom has little coverage it has been a lifesaver. We used it in Turkey, Albania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Macedonia and Croatia where our TomTom only has main roads. We have it mounted on the dash of the car and the beauty is that it gives a better overall picture of the road ahead. Many times Jenny has looked at the Osmand and overruled the TomTom as the route was more straight forward in the Osmand. It is also useful when we our out of our motorhome sightseeing it give us our location and we can use it as a street map in cities and towns. Well worth having

Maps

With all this technology available to us we still use a map. We normally go to a large supermarket and buy one there that has the most detail available. They are not that expensive and if our technology fails or we are in doubt we refer to the map. Tomtom has let us down sometimes and a map is a good back up.

TomTom

We love our TomTom it has been a great help as we wander our way through Europe. But we have learnt not to trust it. Many time it has sent us off our route only to redirect us back onto the same road were travelling on. It does have its limitations as it does not fully cover all of Europe that is why we use the Osmand program as well as maps when we travel. Putting in POI’s makes it easy the get to places and most times it directs up right to the front door of where we are going. The TomTom is designed for cars so always be aware of the signs when coming to bridges and tunnels. [Know what height your motorhome is].

Signs

It seem basic but looking out for road signs is common sense. But with the technology we have we seem to overlook the simple things. When we first started travelling we thought the TomTom was all we needed, how wrong we were. Now we have the TomTom on our Osman and a map but we still look out for simple street signs. For example we were driving through the middle of Madrid and all was going smoothly until TomTom told us to take a left turn even though there was a large sign pointing to the place we were heading. We took the turn and ended up in a traffic jam lasting for over 30 minutes only to be redirected by TomTom to the road we were on. If only we had followed the sign we would had continued on without a problem. Never fully trust the TomTom!!!