On the journey home from our family holiday yesterday I planned our route using the trusted AA Road Atlas. I found what looked like the most direct route using A roads, no need for M-ways as the journey was only 40 miles from the Peak District back down to North Birmingham. We had used a combination of maps and sat-nav on our hols, the map for fun and heading out to days out, and the sat-nav to make sure we got back!
Satisfied that I had planned the best route home I turned the sat-nav on anyway to see what route it came up with. The first route took us across to the A38, the second to the M6! I scrolled through a few more alternative routes but none matched our planned route.
Never mind I thought, and chose the first route on sat-nav and set off on our planned, more direct route. Poor sat-nav kept asking us to turn around and kept replanning and trying to send us back to the original route and only got with the programme around Lichfield.
My question/query is, is it better to plan my own journey than leave it to sat-nav (I like to have some idea of my route anyway)? How do sat-navs calculate their routes? My old device had an option for quickest or shortest route but not my newer Tomtom. What do people think in the sat-nav vs road atlas debate?
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