Hertz Rental Car in Ireland - GPS???

When I told a co-worker in Cork that I would be driving in Ireland, the first thing out of his mouth was, "Get a GPS!" According to him, you can get good maps, but the GPS is as good (or better) and you don't have to keep pulling over.

I'm worried about finding our way...even with the GPS...because a lot of the addresses we have for our B&Bs don't look anything like an traditional address to me. I have things like... "ROCKCREST HOUSE -
Gortamullen, Kenmare,Kenmare" Where is the street address? Are the GPSs going to recognize info like this??

Heather,

Almost any B&B will provide you with driving directions and some even have a little street map on their website. In any case, you can always ask a local. The Irish people are very helpful and hospitable and they even speak a form of English.

Garmin are shortly releasing a geo postcoding system for Ireland - get the code from the B&B owners(they get it on dedicated web map) just put it into the Garmin SatNav and it takes you to the door - no need for any complicated and confusing directions. All will be in place by end June 2010

Just FYI, I would travel with both. We relied a lot on the GPS last summer, and it took us down some little cattle paths (yes, the roads over there are small, but these were really small) that resulted with a nasty scratch down the rental car, when there were other, bigger roads close by. The rental company will probably give you a map, use that to have a ballpark idea of where you're going (at least which highway to be looking for) before you set off, then do the GPS.

Just got back, we brought our own Tom Tom, that we downloaded at home before we left. It really saved our lives. We had no problems at all. Whipped us through Round a bouts and all. We did have a back up Michelin Map that my husband used to confirm when he would set his route the night before we took off.

I just got the latest 2010 GB/Ireland Michelin map and it looks like it will be really handy as a back up to the GPS.

Can someone confirm what a true Irish address might look like? In the US its street, city, state, zip code. I'm not seeing anything similar for Ireland.... What do I need to look for to input into the GPS?

In my experience, a GPS is convenient, but not an absolute substitute for a good map and reading road signs. Examples- in the winding, one-way streets of Colmar, there was significant road construction and detours, which made the directions I was getting from the TomTom completely useless. I had to consult the pedestrian map in the Rick Steves book (good for walking, not good for driving!) just to get oriented. Also, I've encountered multiple occassions (usually in rural areas) where a GPS will direct me to the wrong exit of a round-about, when the correct direction was clearly marked by road signs. Finally, on my last visit, the TomTom on a few occassions showed that I was driving in the Rhine, through a cow pasture, and off the side of a mountain. Either I was having a severe psychotic episode, or the GPS was wrong.

Yes, get a GPS, then trust it, especially in small towns.
The only problem I had was that there is work being done on the motorway between Limerick and Dublin and a recent exit closure was too recent to be noted.

By the way, the RockCrest house is amazing! Use the directions in the book once you get to Kenmare!

I'm sitting in my B&B in Dingle waiting on breakfast. I brought my own Garmin GPS from the US with a new Europe card. I have found that it didn't recognize the recent completion of the M6 between Dublin and Galway. After we got off to see Clonmacnoise it didn't have the M6 anymore. Also, in the Burren some of the R roads were there and some weren't. I didn't notice any N roads missing.

We've been using the AA Road Atlas (about $14 on Amazon) as a backup and it's been really handy.

With the B&B directions provided, we haven't had any problems finding them yet. If B&B owners provided GPS coordinates that would make life a little easier. If Garmin is introducing a new B&B code system that isn't in their present software, I wouldn't personally spend the money to buy a software update if that's what will be required.

I do have the GPS coordinates for all of our B&Bs...they are in the book we got with our vouchers! That will make it all easier! :) Thank you all for you replies!!