For navigation on my trusty, rusty Africa Twin I originally made do with a dodgy HP iPaq running TomTom v5 that I nicknamed Dumbass (a successor in part to Doofus, Dingus and Dork), but that kicked the bucket after it was sent flying by mistake.

The following year introduced my Garmin GPSmap 60CSx, and then after about eight years of hard graft on its part on bicycle, motorbike, train and ferry I upgraded in part to the magical world of Google maps on my phone. But after I accidentally destroyed my phone, I found that its replacement doesn't do well in the cold, and I decided I didn't really like the risk of having it on the handlebars anyway, however tightly and reliably my Grefay mount holds it on the Africa Twin's handlebars.

For Fidra the Pan European, and with grand plans to go to France in the summer, I wanted to try another solution: surely there was a way to have offline maps, like my Garmin, with the computing horsepower and big touchscreenicity of a phone, and the navigability of Google maps.

And so I got myself a cheap Samsung A320 which is near enough waterproof, and installed OSMand for mapping, navigation and route recording. Within a day I had deleted OSMand on account of it being massively hobbled for trying out, and the array of subscription or one-off payment options were so complex they made no sense to me. I don't care what other people say about OSMand: it may be the cat's pyjamas, but it's too damn complicated.

But then I discovered Magic Earth, powered by OpenStreetMap sourced maps that, rather incredibly, are available for near enough every country. Scotland? Check. England and Wales? Check. Every départment in France? Check. I tried it and I liked it, and having used it for several months now, I really like it.

The only thing Magic Earth doesn't do is record where I've been, so I downloaded GPS Logger which is so small and neat an app it could almost fit on my Palm Pilot.

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It was quite helpful to have a offline map on the iPhone while in Tokyo.