Originally Posted by
Tourist in MSN
I have not used a cue sheet in years and the group that I have ridden brevets with no longer provides them. Not sure what cue sheets has to do with a map. A couple years ago on a brevet, one rider that relied on a cue sheet had gotten lost and he found me by accident. I backtracked to get him to a control so he could get back on track. I do not remember if his phone ran out of battery or what, but all he had was a cue sheet.
Having a GPS and a phone with a couple apps (I use Komoot and Maps.Me) is great, but also having the paper map for planning and for discussing where to go with others is the way to go on a bike tour.
But, if you never do any bike touring and only ride routes that had a GPX file available, I can understand not having any interest in paper maps. Riding around near home on group rides with others, I don't bother to carry paper maps either.
You had stated that paper map can help you find a place to stay on a bike tour. I'm saying our phones and google maps do that already which eliminated the need to carry around a big piece of paper.
I don't do any bike touring...But if I did I wouldn't not be using a paper map with all of the other smaller portable gadgets that we now have.
I brought up paper cue sheets because it's kinda like carrying around a paper map. Point being race directors have eliminated paper cue sheets and they just provide a GPX file to load onto a bike computer for turn by turn directions.