I would guess that the majority if not all Motorhome owners have a SatNav of one kind or another but if you haven’t or are thinking of replacing one then please read on.

The first SatNav I had was a Navman that worked really well for around 3 years but because it was not supported by Vista I couldn’t synchronize it with my laptop plus Navman stopped issuing map and software updates for it.  The lack of map updates was the biggest issue and the one that caused me to search for another SatNav; one that I would be able to update, connect to Vista and one that had a great deal of support from the manufacturer.

I’m a bit anal about these things and treat buying something like this as a huge project so I read everything I can about them, produce my SatNav facility wish list, narrow down to my top 3, think again and then decide.  It’s a real big deal for me but it usually means that I get what I want.

So it was that in June 2008 I bought a TomTom GO730 SatNav together with a remote control and I’ve been very happy ever since.

With the season just about to kick off in earnest I thought it would be a good idea to write a post about these mysterious devices that we all call SatNavs in order to help anyone who’s thinking of buying one.

What is a SatNav : It’s a device that will get you from A to B in either the quickest time possible or the shortest distance which isn’t usually the shortest time.

What isn’t a SatNav : It’s not a mind reader nor a visionary nor has it any sense of what a Motorhome is.

Whilst a SatNav can be a real boon it can be a real nightmare as well and I’m sure you’ve all heard of the tales of woe caused by SatNavs directing motorists down dead ends, the wrong way up a one way road, the wrong town with the same name and in the extreme over a cliff – not sure if this last one’s true but I certainly read it somewhere.  My own personal experience of the wrongdoings and rightdoings of a SatNav are plenty and I’ll share a few with you now:

• We were staying at Norcenni Girasole Club in Italy just outside of Florence and had been on a day visit to Sam Gimignano when on the return journey the SatNav directed us down a road through Chianti country that looked fine and I thought would be very pleasant with lots of good views of country life.  It was just that for a while and then the tarmac stopped and the road became a black cindery slippery dusty thing that I thought would change back just as rapidly.  But no, it didn’t, and to make matters infinitely worse suddenly there was a hill and a bend and I didn’t make it to the top.  The front wheels were spinning and the more I tried to get going the more we slipped towards the edge of the road which had a drop of around 4 feet, enough to frighten the life out of me.  I kept having visions of toppling over the edge.  Some very friendly Swiss people stopped to help and rang a farmer to see if he would tow us off with his tractor but he was out in his field – how unfair – but did say that hat he would come along later.  The friendly Swiss family had to go but also said they would be back later.  Hey I thought, I’ve seen this stuff in the movies, just put a carpet under your tyres and you’ll be off in no time; well no, that doesn’t work.  In the end I reversed back down the hill with my wheels teetering on the edge and just hoping that everything held, which it did.  We managed to turn around at the bottom of the hill and went back the way we came.  I then reprogrammed the SatNav to use the motorways and we went the long way back.  We got back just in time to get a table in the site restaurant thank goodness, I needed a drink!

• Another cracker, but not as scary, was on the way to Florence we were driving on the ring road around Milan and whilst going around a roundabout the SatNav told me to take the right hand lane.  Sounds easy but there were three lanes to choose from and for some mysterious reason I took the centre exit and drove down into the centre of Milan and onto a road that looked just like a car park.  The SatNav recalculated a route and directed me along a couple of roads that took an eternity to travel down due to the excess of traffic, not to mention scooters, cars and lorries joining the road from what seemed like everywhere and then back up onto the ring road.  Well done SatNav.  The one piece of advice I would give to anyone driving a Motorhome down one of these Italian nightmare roads is to just move gradually along as traffic allows and not to worry about what anyone else is doing, they will avoid you.

• Another thing to be very wary of is if you miss a turning for some reason.  The SatNav will then want to reroute you back on track but in order to do this it will then send you down the first available road and this may not be suitable for a Motorhome.  Generally the roads we get directed down are fine but when this happens the SatNav seems to lose all reason and becomes obsessed with getting us back on track regardless, so it might be prudent to wait until you know you are being directed down a decent road before you turn off.   This is of course much easier in the UK than in Europe and as I’ve said on a previous post the last 5 miles of any journey is the scary part.  Always follow the site directions when you get to this point.

The SatNav I use is a TomTom GO730 and it’s quite brilliant.  It’s a touch screen device but I use the remote control mostly because I hate fingerprints on screens of any kind.  You have a choice of computer generated voices, male & female UK and US, but I use the UK female, it just seems to sound kinder.  You can also download recorded voices of all kinds, some for free and some you have to pay for and there are thousands of POI’s (points of interest) that are available.  Some of the best ones that I use are location directions of the Camping and Caravanning Club sites, the Caravan Club sites, Camping Car Aires positions and Motorway Services and low bridge locations that give you advance warnings as you approach them.

It’s extremely important to keep your SatNav updated both with the operating software and with maps and TomTom are excellent at providing these.  You do have to purchase the map updates but these are essential if you want to feel secure whilst on route especially as the TomTom GO730 has full mapping for the UK and Europe.  There are also free updates (Map Share) that you can download and these are supplied by other users who might spot a map change whilst driving on a particular route, these come thick and fast and are very useful.  There are also speed camera locations for the UK and Europe but have a look at my Guide to Driving in France for information regarding this.

The beauty of the TomTom GO730 is that you can plan a route say from Leeds to Nice in France and it will calculate one continuous route whereas other SatNavs load maps on a country by country basis.

The TomTom GO730 also gives you the option of connecting an ipod if you use one and playing this through your Motorhome radio speakers.  The actual road directions come through an internal speaker that is very good and you can control the volume of this very easily.  If you’re playing your music at the time when the SatNav wants to give you directions then it cuts this sound off, speaks the direction through the internal speaker and then switches the ipod sound back on; neat.

The choices of SatNav are many as with anything you buy nowadays and it is of course a personal choice.

In January 2009 MMM ran an article on SatNavs and recommended the TomTom or Garmin as the best 2 to choose from with the particular model as a personal choice although the writer of the article recommended the TomTom as the number one choice because of ease of use.

In February 2009 the Caravan Club did a comparison of SatNavs and again recommended the TomTom.

My recommendation would be the TomTom GO730 for ease of use, excellent mapping, great facilities and the fact that it has never got me into trouble whilst driving my Motorhome.