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Set the vehicle, Select Faster Time or Shorter Distance, Set any features that you want to avoid and the satnav will plot a route to get you there. The XT has a few additional features - Curvy Roads, Round Trip (given a couple of points or a time or distance).

The Zumo will produce a route over which you have limited control, but it will give turn by turn directions and get you to where you want to go - or take you on an adventure! No planning is required, just follow it. Easy.

Curvy Roads can also be applied to an existing Trip. The route will visit each route point but will apply the selected level of adventurous routing beween the route points.

Create a few ‘must visit’ points and use them to form the basis of your Trip. Let the software choose the roads and then add a few more intermediate points to pin the route to the roads that you prefer.

The XT will follow the route, giving turn by turn directions. In some circumstances it may recalculate the route, but it will always go through all of the points that you specify.

Planning a Trip is a compromise between minimising the number of additional points and ensuring that the satnav goes along your preferred roads.

Getting to know how the different route points behave and how and when the XT is likely to recalculate the route, is the key to getting a trouble free Trip.

Tracks are simply lines drawn on the map - or a record of where someone has ridden before. You can display the track on the map, and the satnav will keep the map so that your position is always on the screen.

The XT can not navigate the track in this mode (but see below). There are no instructions - spoken or on the display. The XT shows your position and a coloured line, nothing more. The track will never alter - if you wander away from the track, the map will show the track going one way, and your position will be somewhere else. It is up to you to read the map to stay on track.

This is the smart version of having a paper map and marking your route with a hi-lighter pen. It is a very useful tool to have - ultra reliable - it cannot think for itself or lead you down somebody's garden path. It is just as effective for off road use as well as on roads.

The XT comes with the ability to ‘navigate’ a track. It still will not give directions, and in fact behaves in exactly the same way as the track in the paragraph above. But this time if you wander away from the track, it tells you how far away the nearest part of the track is - and it draws a dotted straight line in the direction you would need to go. See the screen shot (Pic 4). It’s up to you to find the roads to get you there.

This is probably designed for off road use, but it works quite well for on-road use as well. Having set off to test this thinking that it would be a waste of time, I was surprised how useful this could be.

This is a feature on the XT. Take any track, convert it to a Trip and you get a route which the satnav will navigate, giving turn by turn directions. There are no intermediate points, but the new trip follows the original track precisely and will not recalculate - unless you try to edit it.

If you deviate from the magenta line on the map then is locates the closest point on the original track just like it does in the example above. In this situation though it finds the most direct way to get you to the closest point by road, and plots a route to get you there. At first glance when riding, it looks as though it is recalculating the entire route - but it is just aiming to get you back to the original.

Although it calls this a ‘Trip’ - it is not the same sort of Trip that is produced by using planning software like Basecamp. You get a warning - if you edit it, the route will be discarded and the Zumo will calculate a standard route - when it will head to the end point.

• Plan a Trip using Trip planning software.
• Convert the route that is calculated into a track.
• Display both the route and the track in different colours on the map at the same time.

The XT will navigate the route giving turn by turn directions. It will show the shaping points and via points as you get close. For most of its length the route will be on top, obscuring the track, but if the route ever needs to recalculate, it will expose the track underneath- marking the original route.

This makes it very easy to spot any changes that the satnav may have made. The XT does not re-calculate a route at random, but in certain circumstances it may need to. This trick helps to spot the changes and it gives you the choice of taking the new route or staying on the old.

How you use the satnav is entirely up to you. I see a lot of different recommendations to use different types of software; to put as many ‘Waypoints’ into a route as possible; to turn automatic recalculation off; to use tracks; to turn the track into a Trip. These techniques seem to work for some people. I smile to myself and keep quiet. But when you really know what a Garmin mean by a ‘Waypoint’, you will be suitably armed to spot how reliable is the information from on-line ‘experts’. Including these articles !

This document attempts to explain how routes behave and how to use the features of a Trip in order to allow the XT to do what it does best, without causing problems. That is to navigate you along the roads that you want without having to constantly fiddle with the satnav. It will teach you how to avoid the potential problems in the first place rather than how to patch up the issues by preventing the satnav from doing what it is designed to do.

I don’t pretend to be an expert, but I have carried out a lot of rigourous testing and solved a lot of problems that other people have had. I disagree with much of the stuff that I read on-line about how to make a route work for the XT. I can still make a route that the XT will follow faithfully, but I reckon that if you have to stop it from recalculating, or pin it down so that it cannot make any decisions, you might as well buy a paper map and a hi-lighter pen. They are much cheaper and they do not recalculate your route either. I am not saying that others are wrong. They have found a method that works for them, and really that is all that matters.

This little essay describes how I get the XT to work for me, and describes my reasoning. It’s not necessarily the right way. It is just my way. Take it or leave it from someone who never has problems with satnav routes on tour.