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I now get everything as a track, split itup into out/back routes if there are any shared roads near the start/finish, or chunks based on days, and then display them on the map page, zoom it in to about 100m or so and then keep an eye on that.
I use TCX tracks, and the policy above is my fallback position for when I'm having a bad enough GPS receiver day that it thinks I'm in the bushes 100m east of the road and constantly "beep beep GO WEST" at me until I give up and Stop Course.
Other than that failure mode, I find that following a TCX track without any routable maps active (you can have a routable map set on the SD card for if you decide to attempt auto routing, just leave it disabled until you want it) works really well. The "off course" audible warnings are helpful, and I have "Course/Dist to Next" as a field on the data page, so I can get constant reassurance that I am not lost without needing to flick to the map screen.
This is all why I just follow a track on the map page. No routing choices for the GPS to do, and crashes are very rare (I believe that most, but not all, of the crashes are related to routing). Doesn't stop you going off route though, and requires some getting used to.
Routing is hard, especially for a small embedded device like a GPS that has limited processing power (more processing power == shorter battery life).
The closest I got to getting it to work was on my Edge 705 which supports GPXX files (note the extra X) where you could have thousands of routing points via GPXX extensions. Before the GPXX extensions you were limited to a handful of routing points, which gave the GPS freedom to come up with weird and wacky routes between points, especially when the map data is awry and won't let you go down obviously fine roads (either because it thinks you can't get through or there's some weighting attached to the road to dissuade its use for bikes).
With the GPXX extensions I'd have a point to travel through every 30 yards or so, so the routing algorithms had little choice, but it wasn't like trying to navigate against a GPX track where it badgers you with "Straight on in 30 yards" every 30 yards FOR THE ENTIRE RIDE.
However, I finally ditched routing as it was just shit at picking up where it left off if, for some reason, I did detour from the route (closed roads, nip off to a shop/petrol station, etc) or turned the GPS off and back on again at a control. And when tired in the middle of a long Audax the last thing I want to be doing is trying to remember how to trick it into playing ball again.
I now get everything as a track, split itup into out/back routes if there are any shared roads near the start/finish, or chunks based on days, and then display them on the map page, zoom it in to about 100m or so and then keep an eye on that.