I started out the planning using the OSM Velomap Italy. It was OK but cycle routes had annoying little gaps in them which cause Basecamp to do all kinds of weird routes which no number of intermediate points will fix.
Last night I discovered that http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/ has what is (to my eyes) much better rendering of what are essentially the same data. I mean who needs those huge arrows for one way streets? That's only advisory on a bicycle anyway :-) So 90MB of downloads later (one copy for Basecamp, one for my GPS), I have better maps to work with! I must say that the process of requesting and receiving the map data is very polished! I wonder who is paying for it?
That's why cartography is an art as well as a science. These OSM maps are probably good enough to use on my Garmin when we are travelling. I may still purchase the City Navigator maps for use in Florence, Arezzo etc. Of course my other point of reference is Google Maps but in Italy today there is no bicycle routing, Maybe by the time we get there?
Only problem is the size of the download, over 3.8GB as a single zip file foe western Europe.
That's why cartography is an art as well as a science. These OSM maps are probably good enough to use on my Garmin when we are travelling. I may still purchase the City Navigator maps for use in Florence, Arezzo etc. Of course my other point of reference is Google Maps but in Italy today there is no bicycle routing, Maybe by the time we get there?
Update
Yet another source of OSM cycle mapping data http://www.openfietsmap.nl/downloads/europe has excellent cartography and contours as well, so the advantages of both the others.
Only problem is the size of the download, over 3.8GB as a single zip file foe western Europe.
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