Touring in France and Spain with 'TIM'; TT-GO

DocL · Regular Visitor Joined: Nov 15, 2004 Posts: 81

Here are a few observations on touring with TIM (TT-GO), from my trip to Spain. These are the 'old' maps and v4.42.

He does have some ‘glitches’ within the system. Often, from going off-route’ slightly into an Aire de Repos or Service station, he get’s ‘lost’ and gives, sometimes, crazy directions, like “turn left in 50m” when you are already on the Autoroute. Other times he directs you correctly back onto the Motorway.

Sometimes he directs you to 'keep left' or 'keep right' when motorways seperate, but then other times he doesn't, so there is still the need to keep your eye on signs.

He made a big mistake in directing me from the flat in Calpe, the wrong way up a one-way street!! I've sent an arror message to Tom Tom.
This must be a problem in the routing software as the one-way street is clearly marked on the map!!

He directed me around Zaragosa, where I’ve often got lost, perfectly well with no problemo, and got me to the hotel Casa Ruba, in Biescas, without a glitch. On the basis of this perfect routing, I let TIM direct me from Laruns to the Irish pub in Pau, on the Boulevard des Pyrenees, and from there to Villeneuve-sur-Lot and all the way to a hotel/restaurant in Montreuil sur Mer (France Map).

He got decidedly muddled in Pau (or I read his map wrongly) and I ended up a cul-de-sac outside their Cultural Centre. Ignored Tim for a while and used my previous ‘knowledge’ to get myself up to the high part of Pau; TIM eventually reworked the route and I got to the Boulevard OK, having a nice lunch in the Irish Pub!

For the route from Pau to the N20, N. of Cahors, and up towards Paris all was fine. Around Paris, he went a way I would not have gone myself; to the west of Paris, partly on the peripherique, to the A16. All was fine, me following his directions, UNTIL we entered some of the tunnels on the peripherique. Tim lost SAT signal and the ASN just doesn’t seem to work very well, so he doesn’t really know where you are. Needless to say there was a choice of road to be made, within the tunnel, and I took the wrong one!! “Turn around when possible” he said when eventually out of the tunnel! Anyway he did direct me, eventually, back to the A16, going along the north bank of the Seine and then going north on the old N1. I would not have been very happy towing with a caravan though!!

After that hiatus all was fine and we got to the Hotel in Montreuil without further hitches.

The MRE map is far more useful than I had imagined, when travelling on, eerh, major roads! When towing a caravan, I think I would use this map so that the smaller roads were not available for TIM to use. I’ve yet to see what route he would have sent me if I had used the MRE map rather than the France Map.

Problem with MRE is that many towns are not ‘named’, even though they are located on the map, so you can’t navigate to many towns (not named) even though the roads all exist! Mater’s village in Staffs. isn’t named, but the High Road is there, so I’ve had to save it as a favourite by the GPS location and 'name' it. In the GB map, the village is named!!

Otherwise I found TIM exceedingly helpful and very good at reducing the stress of navigating in unknown areas. 9.5/10
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Cheers, Doc L.

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