The Garmin GPSMap 64s – la croix de gattigues

For 10 years I used the Garmin GPSmap60CSX. I used it with Garmin maps that had no altitude model and then migrated to the new altitude based maps. In south-central France, these maps were pretty accurate. The device was sturdy too, but I finally gave up on it when the clip holding the map chip in place broke and it was no longer easy to keep the chip in place under the batteries. A small piece of cardboard folded into an accordeon shape usually worked, but every time I changed the batteries, the chip came loose. It came loose if bumped while hiking too. This became a non starter after a while.

So I switched to a newer version – the 64s. What’s new with this one ? A new menu system that took time to get used to. A new desktop software package – Basecamp – that also took some time after giving up on Mapsource. The maps no longer transfer to the desktop, unless the device is tethered. There is a new compass that needs less calibration. The device seems to be more accurate and gets a faster fix on position possibly due to the use of both GPS and Glonass satellite clusters. There are new maps with a different rendering style in Basecamp – not better – just different.

But there are also a couple irritating “features”. For example, the device remembers it’s last position on shut down. At the next power-up, track recording somehow takes account of the last known position and starts the new track with a non-zero distance (and that non-zero starting distance looks suspiciously like a straight line distance from the last known position). If you forget to reset the track record on the start of your hike (even if you cleared out the records the night before during preparation), you get a spurious starting distance. If you then don’t check the distance is already clocked up on hte device, you can not tell how far you have walked on the day. Very irritating.

Another irritation is the time taken to get a decent fix on altitude. If you know the altitude of the starting point, it is best to set the starting altitude on the device. The altitude fix trends towards the correct value over time, but in some cases, this takes an hour or more. The altitude profile of that first hour is therefore inaccurate. In this case, any attempt to use the track log data to determine cumulative climbing is a waste of time.

Hiking in south central France

This site is about walking, mostly in south central France, specifically the Cévennes “mountain” range, the Grands Causses area with it’s plateaus and canyons, the departments of Gard with the garrigue landscapes, the Vaucluse, the Herault, sometimes the Ardèche, the Avéyron and the Drôme. There are descriptions of interesting walks, but sometimes also the non-interesting ones. There are occasional articles about the hardware and software you might use while hiking and in particular handheld GPS devices and smartphones. There are also references to cartography both in the field and on the computer screen back home. The progress in the area of web mapping in the past several years, with the arrival of services like Google Maps, Nokia Here (now “Here we go”) and the OSM Open source map service, has been spectacular.

However, hiking in this region is more than just walking with eyes focused forward or concentration on the GPS screen. It’s also about observing and understanding the landscapes, villages, farms, ancient ruins and various geological curiosities. Often the subject of interest is not the “what”, but the “why”. Why did people settle here hundreds of years ago? Why did the ancient trade routes pass this spot?

In this region, traces of human activity are everywhere – in the still occupied villages and farms, but also in the undergrowth, on the riverbanks and and on the abandoned hillsides. This site aims to explore these subjects, traveling on foot, at about 3.5 km per hour.

This site is also for people who like maps. There are maps in nearly every article, often with interactive features. Try them out.

For every walk mentioned in an article, the site provides a downloadable gpx file suitable for use on a handheld gps device. The site provides additional access to a database of some 700 circuits also complete with downloadable gpx. It is worth noting however, that a gpx track is a perishable commodity. Over time waymakings change, land owners block walking routes, obstacles appear. For this reason, when available, dates of the most recent passage on the circuits are also provided. Use with care.

Everywhere you go on these hiking routes you are likely to see a field cross. They can be in iron, stone, or wood and can be simple or ornate. These field crosses are supposed to have protected travellers from bandits – as supposedly no bandit would dare attack near a symbol of the all powerful religion.

So the french word “croix” translates to cross and holds the connotation of the cross as a religious symbol. However, in the context of this site, cross means crossroad or intersection. “La Croix de Gattigues” refers to a crossroad in a hamlet in the Gard department at which, no surprise, there is also a fine an iron cross.

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