Today I used GPSWatch while I walked in Leigh Woods here in Bristol in the UK. This is the first time I have used a GPS of any sort. It was a circular walk of about 3.5 miles through woods and gullies and along the River Avon. It is a route I am fairly familiar with.

My setup is Sony Ericsson K800i with Holux GPSlim236 Bluetooth GPS receiver. I have GPSWatch set to the Ordnance Survey grid system and imperial units (miles).

Before the walk I entered the details in to Memory-Map, drawing it as a route with 20 waypoints. I exported the route as a GPX file and loaded it into GPSwatch.

As I walked along I used "Direction Compass" to monitor my progress between waypoints. I didn't use it to find the waypoints as I know the route. Observations:

1. As you go along, the distance from the waypoints seems accurate.

2. The direction pointer tends to waver about sometimes and a little bit of "mental low-pass filtering" is necessary. Overall it was accurate and as you walk at a steady pace, it points the right way about 95% of the time. It gets more confused near the waypoint then reliably points behind you as you walk away.

3. The "To Reach Dst:" indicator is an estimate only (which I suppose is to be expected).

4. The Grid Reference has a systematic error of about 100m North-West i.e. the position shown is about 100m NW of the true position. That is true at my home as well, maybe it is a limitation of GPS?

5. Communications with the Bluetooth GPS receiver seemed good, the displays were continually updating. I have noticed that GPSWatch does not indicate when Bluetooth communications is lost (e.g. when you turn the receiver off).

Overall I was impressed, the system was responsive and fairly accurate. I would have liked to push the test i.e. to follow the direction indicator even when it was wavering, to see if it corrected itself. On this walk this would have resulted in me falling in the river.

I will also try it out on a new walk i.e. which I have not done before.