Don’t get me wrong, enthusiasts in Serbia have been combining cycling and the use of GPS for a while, although the whole endeavour is hindered by the lack of decent cartography. There just aren’t any decent maps available, so a lot of the work is done by cyclists just getting out there and mapping the trails with their own devices.

I hadn’t really considered the possibility of getting into GPS until recently. There was definitely this sense that once you go the GPS route (so to speak) there is this strange sense in which you will never NOT know where you are again! Well, at least roughly!

Surely you can see it - the certain charm in getting hopelessly lost and not having a clue how to get where you are going. I am pretty much a connoisseur of this “charm”!

Well, this is all set to be history because a few days ago, MTB-Serbia took the plunge, and I went out and got a Garmin Legend, the basic model. It certainly has no bells and whistles, but it fit my budget and does the job.

And I can hereby proudly present to you the results of my first proper GPS-powered ride. Here is the .plt file (for use in OziExplorer, if you happen to have 50k maps of Serbia! Which is unlikely) and here is the .kmz file (for Google Earth).

It was a fantastic April day, this winter has been very unwinterlike, and spring seems to be going the same way! I did the first half of the ride alone, through the fields and vineyards around Bukovac, along a track I had plotted in OziExplorer on a reasonably detailed (though old) map. It took way longer than I expected, I didn’t really grasp the scale properly, and also there were a number of places where the trails through the fields just didn’t exist any more!

Eventually though, after getting completely lost at one point (even WITH the GPS - welcome to my world!) I hooked up with Zoli, who had been waiting for me at the agreed location for about half and hour and we headed uphill.

Here is Zoli admiring the view up to our destination, Zmajevac on Fruska Gora (which we never reached, by the way!)

I won’t bore you with the details, but you can have a look at the rest of the pics in the MTB-Serbia gallery. The highlight was cycling up a road which proved to have some kind of military facility at the end of it: we weren’t allowed to go through by the soldier on duty (who looked surprised to even see anyone up there) and were thus forced to forge 100 vertical metres up a 45 degree incline, carrying and pushing our bikes, until we came out onto a ridge which was vaguely where we wanted to be.

I did about 55km all in all - a great ride (considering the tough terrain) and a good distance to check the abilities of my new Garmin Legend GPS

First impressions using GPS:

PLUS - it IS kind of good knowing where you are (most of the time), and what your bearing should be, if you have set a waypoint to navigate to.

MINUS - you can spend too much time gazing at the display and inserting waypoints instead of just enjoying the ride. The device is always “present”, distracting you from the main point - the riding.

However, for our “Serbia Bike Trek” (more about this big ride soon, as I keep saying!) I think we will need some help navigating. We plan to negotiate several hundred km of wild mountainous regions, and I think it is just time to say YES to GPS!

If you think others might want to read this post, don’t be selfish, click above to AddThis to Digg, Del.icio.us or just about any other bookmarking service and share and share alike!

Popularity: 8% [?]

Posted on April 14th, 2007 by markowe
Filed under: Biking - general, MTB Serbia (All)