Over the years of travelling abroad on the bike we've always used a good detailed, or sometimes not so detailed, map and a highlighter for the finer art of navigation. This has always worked well up to a point, but every journey was marked by a fair few stops to read the map or to turn round and correct a bit of wandering off route. And over after a few trips the map starts tearing along the folds, plus having to turn it over and reinsert it in your map pocket ... Maps can get to be a bit of a pain.

So we embraced Satnavs with some enthusiasm when they appeared. First off was an Ipaq with Tomtom and a wired GPS receiver, all stuffed rather bulkily into a tank bag. Voice instructions were fed via a wired earpiece, which always created lots of amusement with the accompanying riders when the poor sap navigating got off his bike, forgetting the earpiece wire with predictable consequences, plus lots of swearing.

Then came a purpose built unit, a Navman 510. The navigation system was of course not the same as Tomtom and took some learning, but the unit was very small and light. At this time Tomtom were producing vast heavy things that were no good at all for us. The downside of the Navman was itineraries. These are important to us as we plan routes which take in lots of minor backroads and getting the exact routes is vital to avoid crap roads and built-up areas as much as possible. The 510 can do intineraries but with a deal more work that the easy Tomtom system. But the upside was the road selector, setting your preference for different road types is better than the Tom's basic shortest / fastest route choices.

Again voice guidance was by wired earpiece - we needed the voice as the screen was all but impossible to read with the unit stuck under a plastic tank-bag cover. But the wire was a constant nuisance; but necessary if you couldn't see the screen easily.

A new Fireblade offered an easy mounting option to try - bolting a simple home made bent aluminium holder for the Navman onto the electronic steering damper housing.

This meant the screen was a a better angle and better positioned to be seen without too much effort, good enough for quick route checks at speed.

At the same time the Navman was unlocked with magic internet info and Tomtom 6 installed to give it a new lease of life. Seems to work well, allowing for the slightly ponderous nature of the 510, and it makes itineraries a breeze.

Course Tet had to go one better and buy a proper Tomtom and a mount which makes the unit really easy to view, see next section of this article.

Then one of the guys was recommended to buy a Garmin megabucks thing designed for bikes. Well it may have been, but it wasn't designed to route complicated backroads through Luxembourg, so after a lot a pratting about we gave up trying and resorted to the easy Tomtom.

Conclusion? Well, the Tomtom is the one to go for simply because their software is the most intuitive and the route planning works well. Hardware wise, the old Tomtom One was the best, small and easy to fit on a sports bike but as versatile as the bigger ones. Unfortunately Tomtom have stripped out itinerary planning from the current One so you have to get the bigger and more expensive GO models, a bit clumsy on a bike.

Or you can go for the dedicated bike model, the Rider, which will set you back a staggering 400 quid! For that you get loads of useless junk like bluetooth and phone linkup but useful waterproofing.

Lets get real here - for active use you don't really need voice guidance. The occasional glance at the map is fine for even complicated back road routes with loads of waypoints, and at least then it's your decision when you check your route, not down to the voice guide to suddenly chirp out and possibly affect concentration in a tricky situation; when you're riding in a tight group at speed it's better to miss your turn than suddenly start changing speed and route and confusing the guys following.

Regarding the phone linkup, you shouldn't be using your phone on a bike - concentrate on riding! And earphones are not effective substitutes for decent earplugs and won't protect your delicate lugholes, so all the bluetooth stuff on the Rider is a waste of money and simply adds complication.

We reckon that the ideal Satnav unit would be the Tomtom One series 2 with waterproofing and a removable SD card for maps. Failing that, a Tomtom One V3 with version 7 navcore, so you can get itineraries back simply by changing the menu. We tried this on a One V3 which came with navcore 8, but it didn't work and neither did navcore 7 when we installed it, so the later V3s are no good.

A couple of the guys have been using SatNav for a few years now, either TomTom maps in a PDA or a Navman style GPS unit, stuck in the map pocket of a tank bag. As others in the group have been taking care of GPS navigation on the bike trips I didn't bother to get a bike mounted GPS, I couldn't see the need.

But I bought a TomTom One last year for the car and have come to appreciate the benefits of GPS as well as the problems they can cause, but on the whole the pluses far outweigh the cons and I thought that maybe it was time to look at using it on the bike.

First off was power - the battery is fine for an hour or two but I'll need longer than that. I fitted a 12 V fused lead from an Optimate for the battery end and then bought a car cigarette lighter from Halfords, and wired it up to ensure I had a permanent power feed. This worked well and the female part of the cigarette lighter is secured with Velcro underneath the rear seat.

The next thing was where to put the GPS? First I tried to use it with it sitting in a map pocket on the tank, but my tank is angled from the head stock backwards and angled in the wrong direction, so the GPS is at an angle that is tilted away from your view. To read it properly whilst on the move requires your left hand to shade the GPS (too much glare on the screen), and lean forward a bit more, so you can see what it is instructing you to do. Not an ideal solution, but at least the GPS would be waterproof.

There are now bike friendly SatNavs available but these ain't cheap, and as I already had mine... So, I did some research and came up with a firm called Telferizer. A chap called Bob runs the show and is one of the most helpful guys I have had the pleasure of dealing with for many a year. On his website he shows many variations of the Ram mounts he can produce but, alas, there wasn't one there for my bike. I mailed him and advised the situation, he got back to me very promptly and followed this up with a phone call. I sent him some pictures of the cockpit area of the Blade and he came up with a solution that seems to fit the bill nicely.

It's based on the concept of ball fixings and a suitable clamping arrangement so that there is lots of adjustment of position available but a firm fixing once the clamp is tightened. The main idea for sports bikes seems to be to replace the top yoke centre nut with a modded one incorporating the so called 'Ram' ball head. This then allows a very neat direct fixing for the SatNav carrier plate.

But the current Blades have their electronic steering damper covering the top nut so a bit of imagination is called for.

The mount uses one of the existing 5mm HESD top cover mounting points on RR4 to RR7 Blades - the RR8 can use a ball mount on the yoke topnut. The mounting setup can also work for those like me who don't have the HESD and plastic cover in place. Having this 'Ram' mount to screw into the hole securely gives you your starting point. Attached to this is then a 3" arm that picks up on a similar ball mount attached to a plastic cradle designed for my TomTom One. This lets me have the SatNav sitting in line with my view from the riding position at about the same eye line as the speedo cluster, therefore far better than having it on the tank.

I fitted it all the day I received it and it really does take no more than 5 minutes, it is advisable to thread lock the initial Ram mount into the top yoke as you don't want to over tighten a steel bolt into an ally thread, for obvious reasons. I have the GPS offset to the left of the ignition sitting just underneath the lip of the screen. Turning from full lock left to right will tell you if it is OK and not fouling anything, if it does touch anything, it's easy to move about using the 3" arm.

This weekend I actually got to try it on a ride and I also got to find out if my power cable (TomTom supplied in car charger), was long enough from the power feed to the Nav unit (TomTom One's only have about 2 hours of battery life), which it is. I rode for about 70 miles with the GPS sitting it it's very secure cradle and it was fine. It faces me more than it used to in a map pocket and a quick glance down is all that's needed to ensure you are headed in the right direction.

There is one thing a TomTom One doesn't have though, an ear plug socket. But the way you can set your screen info up on the Tom Tom is sufficient to understand what's going on; how far until the next turn, what that turn is, a roundabout, a junction etc. and the road you are on, so all in all, it seems like Bob has come up trumps with this mount I now have.

All I have to do now is ensure my TomTom is waterproofed, nothing a small plastic bag won't take care of. Who likes riding in the rain anyway.

If you need a GPS mount for your bike, give Bob a call or drop him a line, he's a top bloke and bloody helpful.

Having twatted about with the inbuilt map system on the Nokia N95 phone I was intrigued to see if the famous Tomtom would install. Although Nokia Maps comes with good full euro maps, the navigation is a bit basic and not up to decent driving instructions or itinerary routing. After some faffing about I got Tomtom working but found 2 problems; it wasn't really designed for keypad use and really needs a touch-screen, which makes it a bit longwinded to use, but much more importantly it was a pain getting it to hook up with the phone's inbuilt GPS, requiring an phantom bluetooth connection to be created first. So Tomtom lost some of its attraction, but what else to try?

Well there is a program going by the odd moniker of Sygic Drive, which seems to be of Polish origin. Very Tomtom like in appearance, although a tadge more basic. The upside of this is it's easier to use and quicker to run with the limited capabilities of a phone.

The signposting is good, showing you what to look out for, and on the Nokia the GPS fix is fast and seems pretty reliable. The program works well without a touch screen, but for planning itineries there is the added bonus of a basic Windows version which will run on a PC. Once the route is sorted and tested it's a 2 second job to transfer it to the phone.

The system also look like it will run on a PDA or, heaven forbid, the faithfull old Navman 510! And if it really is less demanding than Tomtom it could run faster.

Maps are available for most countries it seems, and it will load a whole bunch in together to make cross-country routing easy. A simple text file controls what countries load.

Not bad at all in use, although the routing can be a bit odd sometimes, not as predictable as Tomtom.