Hello all,
I'm planning a three-week driving trip in Brittany. I've driven in France before and am fairly confident, besides, getting lost is half the fun! However, if the car doesn't come with GPS, what have been your successful driving-solo-on-secondary-roads-navigational-strategies? thanks!
Yes - Google Maps too works in "offline" mode on a smart phone (and some tablets) as a GPS, even without a data connection. The trick is that you must download the maps ahead of time (e.g. on WiFi). It works fairly well.
But buying a SIM in France for your phone isn't a bad idea, either, and gives you more info like traffic into, locations of gas stations, etc.
Check out eBay for a used TomTom with french maps. I bought mine for $35. Nobody seems to like Tomtom's but I have had 7,000 km of incident free driving in France with it as my guide.
Matt
Brittany is pretty easy to navigate. I did use my smartphone with a GPS app but there are only a few main roads that take you where you are going and the signage is decent.
I took time to test my smartphone's capability to navigate without data in Brittany. I found that you often need data to search for an address but once you have your destination figured out, you can turn off data and get there using only the phone's GPS. Conceivably you could use WiFi to search addresses for your planned stops then navigate without needing data or a local SIM card.
I used two different navigation apps - CoPilot and Google Maps. I liked CoPilot much better. It gave me the speed limit, speed limit warnings, speed camera warnings and looked and sounded like a regular GPS. It cost $30 to download western Europe maps (I did this at home before the trip).
I liked Google Maps better for searching, it was much quicker, but I didn't like the navigation as much. The voice was too fast and hard to understand and the map didn't resemble a normal GPS. Also no speed limits or warnings. I ended up searching with Google Maps then entering the address manually in CoPilot to get there.
The last time I was in Brittany I did really well using an app which used no GPS. It didn't even use any battery. This is absolutely true.
I used a fold out Michelin map - a printed one - and I was fine.
Normandy was a little more difficult. I do use a GPS now, and I'm a pretty dab hand with Waze and Google Maps (hate Apple Maps) but I absolutely always have a printed map in the car. Stuff happens, and being good with a printed map has saved my bacon more than once.
I drove in Normandy and partially in Brittany on a few trips sans GPS, but with excellent IGN maps. They're hard to find here, but well worth buying from their European web store and having them mail them to you here if you have the time http://www.ign.fr/. They're web site takes some time to figure out if you don't speak French. A few years ago I simply bought the European maps for my U.S. Garmin GPS and it mostly works fine (one lengthy detour down footpath in Cherbourg). I'm sure some roads have changed since I installed the files, but not the major roads. So I'll use it again next month. But I'll still bring my favorite IGN 1:25,000 maps of my favorite regions.
Smartphone with HERE Maps. Can be used offline. But as Kaeleku pointed out, if you use it without data, you won't get the data on traffic conditions. Sometimes, however, I think Waze and other apps go way too far in sending me off my route just to avoid a little backup that I probably would have been fine to sit through.
p.s. I do like to combine it with a paper map though to be able to plot out things the evening before, see things in context, etc. For me the combo is best.
We took a two week driving trip through Brittany in April. We brought our Garmin from home and had bought France maps for a previous trip. We road tested against googlemaps and mapme on our cell phones (in hopes we could leave the old school Garmin behind on the next trip) but for us the Garmin was easier. But if all you had downloaded google maps or maps me you would be fine... just have to pay a little closer attention. We like the garmin from home with preloaded sites, bars, restaurants, hotels, etc.
We loved Brittany.
p.s When entering even small towns watch your speed.
Brittany does indeed have some main highways that take you to the large places, but otherwise it's a labarinth, or a web of roads from village to village. Friends who live there, one born there, get lost. I've witnessed plenty of spousal fights over which road. So yes, get a good map and spring for a GPS since 3 weeks will give you time to hit the heart of the web off the large roads. I'm in Brittany almost yearly and use the TomTom.
We've had good luck with the Garmin app on our iPhone.
Wow! You are all brilliant! Thank You!!!
