Round Trip Course

You need to load maps with 'routable roads' in the area. If you don't want to pay for them you can get open source maps that are freely available and load those.

OK thanks. I am new to Garmin so bear with my basic questions please. So do I specifically load maps for my area with Garmin Express? I thought the Fenix 5 Plus came preloaded with maps for Europe? Are these different from routable maps?

It seems that not all maps are routable. The maps let you know where you are and what’s around you but not necessarily allow you to create routes. You can buy maps from Garmin that allow you to create routes or go to somewhere like openstreetmap - http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/ and ‘create’ one for wherever you want to be creating routes.

In my opinion it should work with the Garmin maps everywhere in Europe. They are routeable for running, cycling, walking but not for using a car. Did you have a proper GPS-fix before starting the calculation? Did you see the map at that position?

A possible work around could be to use the round trip routing of the GC app and transfer the course to the watch.

I personally prefer drawing routes myself because I can select where I want to run. The round trip routing in my home zone delivers mostly courses on roads although I live in the woods with very nice ways.

I agree this should work without installing 3rd party maps. Like I said it did work once already in the UK. I am pretty certain I waited for a GPS fix but I’ll give it another go today.

i did manage to connect with Garmin support on chat and they told me to reinstall maps. Sent me a link to use Garmin Express to do it which means I have to be back at my computer to do it. I’ll provide an update later this week in case anyone else is experiencing similar issues.

thanks for you help so far.

Regular updates via Garmin Express absolutely make sense, because as far as I know this is the only way to update the Garmin Topo Maps. Current Version is 2019.20.
I just checked how my watch behaves if I do not have a GPS-fix. It just takes the last position and calculates routes from there.
The only other reason I could imagine it that the maps are not activated. When you have a GPS-fix, do you see your position on the map?

So when I have a GPS fix and go to Maps I can see where I am but the map scale is huge. Like the nearest road detail is a motorway a few miles away and then I can see the symbol for the airport and if I zoom out a bit further I can see the sea! I am guessing I have some base level European map loaded but very little detail below country level which is why it can’t find a route.

In Map Settings I have Worldwide DEM Basemap,NR and TopoActive Europe 2019.20, North East enabled. And Use Sys. Settings is On. GPS is set to Normal (GPS Only).

i have tried playing around with some of these settings but doesn’t make a difference. Like I say it looks like I don’t have th detail maps loaded or something is corrupt.

Bingo! That worked and I now have South West maps loaded as well and the map detail is much better. Round-Trip works.

Have to say it took a couple of attempts re-loading the maps with Garmin Express. Once I disconnected the watch on the 3rd attempt the Loading maps screen on the watch fully completed and I could see all of the maps.

So not sure why I got the problem in the first place but lesson learned is that I should check my maps before going away next time. I'm using a mac for syncing so don't know if that's a possible cause but I can't see anything on the Garmin website that suggests it is.

Anyway really appreciate your help. Thanks you!