Where's Bertie? He's in the motorhome parking area at Cite Europe, right next door to the Eurotunnel terminal by Calais.
It was a day of travel. We left home at around 9.30am, stopped for a very tasty lunch with friends, had less of a battle with the weekend closure of the M20 than we had expected, caught a Eurotunnel shuttle an hour earlier than the one booked and settled into the Cite Europe car park at just gone 9pm.
I could leave this blog post right there, but instead I'll zip back to Tuesday last week when started the 'mini saga of the SatNav'. No, in fact, I'll go all the way back to March 2017 when two days of my life were lost in trying to update the maps on our TomTom. It wasn't the first time that obscene chunks of time had been lost in the endeavour, and I swore that no matter how many times the unit gave me the warning that I needed to update, I wasn't going to do so again for at least two years. I would have stuck to that too, except that France has changed the speed limits on its single carriageway roads and Spain has de-tolled a number of its toll motorways. It was the latter that swung the balance to make me think that it was time to bite the bullet and plug the SatNav into the computer.
A day and a half later, and uncountable de-installations and re-installations of the TomTom software, not to mention clearing of caches, deleting of folders and all other things suggested by various help topics, I had to declare defeat. The biggest problem is that the first thing the SatNav does in updating the maps is to delete the existing maps, thus when the update fails, you're left with an electronic gizmo that is neither use nor ornament.
Thus on Wednesday we bought a new SatNav and, given that we have never in five years been able to update the TomTom without problems, we did the obvious thing and opted for a Garmin. On Thursday we tried it and after a bit of analysis of 'Do we not like this because it's different, or is it really less functional?' we came down on the side of not liking it because it really isn't as good (example: it will tell you distance to go or time of arrival, but it won't tell you both at the same time). On Friday evening I gave the TomTom one final chance to redeem itself and, of course, it seemlessly completed the update on the first attempt.
That is how we found ourselves driving down to Folkestone with a TomTom SatNav on the dashboard, a Garmin on the side window and Google Maps in my hand. And every one of them decided that the best route to Folkestone, in view of the closed M20, was down a small lane (also being used by almost every other man and his dog) rather than straight down the A20. Unfortunately, the navigator wasn't doing her job properly and didn't spot this until after Bertie had got up close and personal with various hedges.
Is there a lesson to be learnt here? Would it have been worth spending £180 more for the 'Camper' specific SatNav? It's a question to which we likely won't have an answer until both of the current units die.
It was a day of travel. We left home at around 9.30am, stopped for a very tasty lunch with friends, had less of a battle with the weekend closure of the M20 than we had expected, caught a Eurotunnel shuttle an hour earlier than the one booked and settled into the Cite Europe car park at just gone 9pm.
I could leave this blog post right there, but instead I'll zip back to Tuesday last week when started the 'mini saga of the SatNav'. No, in fact, I'll go all the way back to March 2017 when two days of my life were lost in trying to update the maps on our TomTom. It wasn't the first time that obscene chunks of time had been lost in the endeavour, and I swore that no matter how many times the unit gave me the warning that I needed to update, I wasn't going to do so again for at least two years. I would have stuck to that too, except that France has changed the speed limits on its single carriageway roads and Spain has de-tolled a number of its toll motorways. It was the latter that swung the balance to make me think that it was time to bite the bullet and plug the SatNav into the computer.
A day and a half later, and uncountable de-installations and re-installations of the TomTom software, not to mention clearing of caches, deleting of folders and all other things suggested by various help topics, I had to declare defeat. The biggest problem is that the first thing the SatNav does in updating the maps is to delete the existing maps, thus when the update fails, you're left with an electronic gizmo that is neither use nor ornament.
Thus on Wednesday we bought a new SatNav and, given that we have never in five years been able to update the TomTom without problems, we did the obvious thing and opted for a Garmin. On Thursday we tried it and after a bit of analysis of 'Do we not like this because it's different, or is it really less functional?' we came down on the side of not liking it because it really isn't as good (example: it will tell you distance to go or time of arrival, but it won't tell you both at the same time). On Friday evening I gave the TomTom one final chance to redeem itself and, of course, it seemlessly completed the update on the first attempt.
That is how we found ourselves driving down to Folkestone with a TomTom SatNav on the dashboard, a Garmin on the side window and Google Maps in my hand. And every one of them decided that the best route to Folkestone, in view of the closed M20, was down a small lane (also being used by almost every other man and his dog) rather than straight down the A20. Unfortunately, the navigator wasn't doing her job properly and didn't spot this until after Bertie had got up close and personal with various hedges.
Is there a lesson to be learnt here? Would it have been worth spending £180 more for the 'Camper' specific SatNav? It's a question to which we likely won't have an answer until both of the current units die.
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