Navigation – The Road Ahead?

If you printed off 4 months worth of directions, you would have three things:

1. A trade account with a printer cartridge wholesaler.

2. A document comparable in size to the sequenced human genome.

3. A very boring bike ride.

Yes – One of the things that’s cropped up a lot talking to people is the spectre of route planning and needing to know exact way markers. I however, am not so sure.

Swinging a leg over a bike has always required some faith in serendipity. Whether it rains or shines, whether you puncture, or whether that little cafe has a slice of your favourite cake going, you just can’t plan every detail of life. Riding around for four months, I see absolutely zero need to limit the sort of chance encounters that make for fantastic stories by following a meticulously planned route rigidly from departure day until the end of the trip.

Mr T. Tom and G. Armin can do one.

 So – how are we finding our way? Well, weight and space restrictions mean that I’ll be leaving my sextant at home, and considering that we’re not planning to turn nocturnal, the stars aren’t going to be much kop. Without scoping out moss growth on trees, that just leaves maps, right?

 

Well – not exactly…

There’ll almost certainly be a paper map at some point, as they offer a fantastic means of reading the lay of the land, but in the most, we’ll be using Beeline. This is essentially an electronic compass that sits on your handlebar. Pairing with a smartphone, you simply plug in your destination and wait for a little arrow to point you towards your goal while giving you a nominal distance.

This means that we get a direction but not a decision, which is frankly, a perfect scenario. With our route planned only in terms of places of interest, we’re not always looking to find the fastest route between two points, so Beeline gives us the opportunity to take some more ownership of the journey we’re undertaking.

That’s not to say that turn by turn navigation is something we’re turning our back on completely. Whilst wild camping will be the mainstay of our overnighting, we will occasionally need a campsite shower if we’re to keep from imposing a 10 foot no go zone on account of our stink. If we’ve decided to take a night in a campsite that’s tucked away and we need to make a cut-off, then we will certainly take the fastest route.

Happily, clever little Beeline has that capability too, meaning that if we need to be somewhere for whatever reason, we can be sure of hitting that exact spot thanks to it’s Route Assist Mode.

Isn’t it a drain?

Well, as my front dyno hub leaves us as energy self-sufficient as an electric eel, we can pretty confidently afford to carry another leccy appliance. Also, the Beeline, being a simple little arrow, can go for a full month without charge, and offers about 20 hours of life with our intended use of an occasional tap to refresh our bearings. A day in the saddle taking us just about ten hours, this little device should just add to our experience on the road and of the road.