Estimated Waypoint Times

I'm back from my weekend away (with said route).

My personal estimate was around 6-7 hours which was close (21 miles).

No matter what I do when I set to Direct activity - I cannot get an estimated time for each waypoint.

I can set the speeds for various roads - but this is irrelevant anyway for a hike.

Are you saying you get waypoint times for Direct routes when set to 'Hiking' for the transportation method (not the Activity type)?

I've never looked at estimated times for each waypoint when hiking, I just have a field on the screen of my GPS that gives me eta at destination.

Yep - that has bugged me for years too - (my Memory Map device was just the same).

It seems to use the current speed to work out the ETA and updates it every few seconds.

That's daft - it should use (at least) the last 10 minutes, but really, it should use the whole trip so far to estimate the ETA.

The ETA can swing between several hours depending on if you're walking uphill or downhill.

I've thought about this a lot over the last few years - if it used say the last 30 minutes (if there was enough data for 30min) then it would iron out the ups and downs - to a point.

How do you contact Garmin with suggestions?

I don't agree. Most of us walk faster at the beginning of a trip as we're fresher. Equally if the first part involved lots of climb and the latter part was flatter then again that would be an issue. I like the current setup, if you walk faster the eta decreases, walk slower then it increases. You can make suggestions at www.garmin.com/.../

Correct - we do walk faster at the beginning - but for example, as it's based on the 'current speed' - then when I was approaching the top of Whernside at weekend, and going slow, the ETA was 7:30pm.

Over the crest, and then going downhill 10 minutes later, the ETA is 5:15pm.

That's not very helpful - turned out to be 6pm.

If it was using a longer average - then the arrival time would be slower changing and more accurate.

Also, I don't really want an estimated time at each waypoint - I just want an estimate final arrival time.

Strava is brilliant at it - I've started importing my routes to that and letting Strava do it.

I just don't understand, for walking software (amongst other things) that you can't tell it how fast you walk, but you can tell it how fast you drive.

I'll start bugging them at the link you gave me.

Think of it another way. You know you're behind time so you speed up to get there sooner but the ETA hardly changes, how demoralising that would be. My Garmin has always accurately predicted my arrival time, assuming I continue at approximately the same speed and always been bang on as I arrive.

It is bang on as you arrive - but it's not bang on from what it was telling you 3 hours earlier - that's my point.

It gets more accurate towards the end as there is less distance left to create the error.

My last bit was tongue in cheek, I still believe that the way it works is best and you're the only person I recall to suggest your method. It'll be interesting to see if you get a response from Garmin