T i m wrote
John Rumm wrote
The Natural Philosopher wrote
charles wrote
The Natural Philosopher wrote
dennis@home wrote
charles wrote
The Natural Philosopher wrote

Nowadays, I take a photo of the car (with reg plate).

yebbut I keep my camera in the car..

use your phone!

If you have a recent smart phone you can
use the GPS to mark the location too.

If you don't have a smart phone, a tablet, or a surface and you own
a car, and you can read a map, its amazing what you don't need.

a map won't necessarily help you find your car in a car park

Never said it did, it just extends the range of technology you don't
need.

I had an argument with a technophile friend. Full of himself and his
gadgets 'a satnav will always tell you how to get there better than a
map'

'Possibly, but it doesn't help me decide where I want to go, does it?'

What about if it has lots of interesting "points of interest" overlays
loaded?

Quite, so does exactly help someone (who isn't a Luddite g) see
what is on offer locally and the distances to each, even the free stuff.
;-)

When we first when motorcycle touring our daughter (my pillion) was
quite young but was able to read a map fairly well. We had an intercom
and she had the map in a plastic cover and rested it in a 'bum bag'
strapped round my waist. Everything was fine with her reading the map
... unless it was dark, she was tired, it was raining or she needed to
turn the page.

She might also not spot road tolls or ferries. ;-)

And clearly much worse when riding without a pillion.

Same with a car.

Then, once we had traveled say 200 miles between campsites,
we might then 'waste' an hour finding the actual site because the
scale of the road atlas wasn't really suitable for the detailed stuff.

Then we bought a GPS and all these issues just disappeared. Door
to door (or tent to tent g) in any weather or levels of darkness,
'avoiding' toll roads, ferries and roadworks with no issues at all.
We therefore spent more time 'on holiday' and less time being
frustrated or risking missing the closing time of campsites.

Once we were there we could select 'Nearest fuel' (all brands and
including telephone numbers so you can check they are open),

One thing I found ours doesn't do very well is show you the 24/7
ones so you can plan your trip to use them when travelling at night.

And now that the new superhighway into Sydney from the south
avoids all towns completely, it would be better if you could enter
your car's fuel tank capacity and mpgs and when you filled last
and how much and have it tell you which of the exits you need
to use to fill up and when you need to use a particular one
when using the superhighway in the middle of the night etc.

No doubt both will show up sometime.

or 'Nearest Food' (all types) or what could be more important
in an emergency (anyone's emergency), 'Nearest hospital'.

'Of course' I managed before the GPS in just the same way
I managed before I got a remote controlled TV or washing
machine but sometimes you want more than 'just managing'.

Yeah, specially when you have the phone with you anyway.

We were dropping some stuff off on Freecycle yesterday and whilst I
knew roughly where the person was I didn't know exactly. Because the
Mrs was with me I started to get her to enter the address into Google
maps on my phone, rather than stopping to set the GPS up. She gets
very travel sick and seems to be someone who can't get along with
touch screens so after a few aborted attempts to type in the
destination, I got her to talk it in. Ting, up it comes and just in
time to avoid us overshooting. ;-)

I don't find siri on the iphone works that well for navigation.

Stupid thing tells me that there is no route to Wall St NY when I tell
it to direct me to Waugh St and even spelling the name doesn't work.
Obviously easily fixed and it looks like google maps does that better.
Main problem is that it isnt as easy to trigger on an iphone.

Whoops, google maps is just as completely hopeless
on that even when you add the town and country.

Both should obviously first look for stuff that sounds
like wall st close to where you are and can obviously
be fixed to do that. Google maps did try water st
once, siri never did.

I only use the phone as a GPS when I have to

I never use anything else now even tho I do have a couple
of very good dedicated GPSs, I don't use them at all anymore.

and it's no use mounted on the handlebar of a motorbike in the
rain or when being operated by fingers wrapped in leather gloves.
It is very reassuring to know I have a GPS on me at all times though

Yeah, you can obviously stop and use it if the worst comes to the worst.

(and I have made use of it many times

I use it routinely on the garage/yard sale run and when
out walking for exercise in the bush outside town to drop
a pin where a barbed wire fence is easy to get thru etc.

and in ways I wouldn't have first predicted).

Can't think of any examples of that myself.

Now, if you don't actually crawl out from under your stone very
often or aren't someone who likes doing stuff in the moment,
'planning' a route 3 weeks in advance could be considered
the fun bit of any trip (till the first road closure of course). ;-)

Or traffic. Interesting coming into Sydney in the early morning
rush hour running very late trying to catch the train home since
I was driving the kid's car because they were moving there and
weren't too keen on driving in Sydney traffic having just learnt
to drive in a country town of 20K, being updated on the arrival
time. Quite literally jumped out of the car stopped at the lights
outside the main central railway station and left one of them to
take it from there. He wasn't too keen but handled it fine and
given that I missed the train by minutes, drove back into the
center of the city in the evening to meet up with me again,
so he clearly wasn't too fazed. Using the gps in his phone
both times in what is quite difficult to do with a map even
if you do have a passenger/navigator if you haven't been
there before. Trivial with the GPS in the phone.