Garmin 810 - Base Maps? Strava Routes?

I've used the DCRainmaker to download maps for trips to France, Spain and Belgium and they are brilliant. No need at all to pay for anything else.

Strava routes are simple to download straight into a 810. Takes seconds.

with the 810 you can buy a cheap micro SD card (for about £10) and then download the open source maps. there is a simple how to here:

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2013/05/download-garmin-705800810.html

its pretty easy and you can get maps for the whole world, handy for holiday trips to the alps etc. if you make maps on strava then you export both tcx or gpx and it will do turn by turn navigation. the only issue is that the auto routing is not amazing with the open source mapping. it will get you to your destination but not necessarily the most direct (i.e. approaching sevenoaks from the south west and it took me on a loop to go into the north end when my destination was at the south end. an extra 2k added on). it may be better with the garmin own maps, but significantly more expensive

cheers

rob

I download my routes straight from Strava, export the GPX, drop it into new files then eject the Garmin properly and it'll be on there. It's dead easy.
No turn by turn but if you zoom in on the maps you don't need it. Saves battery for long trips too.
I'd go for an 810. If you've got Di2 I might be tempted by the 1000.
As for maps - I'd strongly suggest buying your Garmin package with the ordanance survey maps. You get the whole of the UK in 1:50 scale.
OS is about as good as maps get in my book, loads easier to pick out stuff like streams, churches etc if you get yourself a bit lost.
Really handy for stuff like hiking and what have you too.
Buying the maps preloaded on the Garmin is way cheaper than buying the map on a micro sd from the Ordanance Survey afterwards..

The 810 will give turn-by-turn directions with TCX files, but they seem to be hit and miss unless I create them myself using Ride With GPS, or similar. I don't think Strava will export TCX files (will it?), only GPX and they don't give TbT directions.

All this may have been fixed with the latest firmware, though — I haven't put it to the test yet.

Open Street Map is your best free bet for Edge maps. Take a look at this guide.

The Garmin 810 will take routes in a TCX format, which you can export from Strava routes. But I'm not sure you get the turn-by-turn prompts (just the route shown on the map), Strava may have fixed that by now. Otherwise use Ridewithgps.com or similar.
I've found the base maps ok on my 1000, but haven't used it outside the UK.