Fuel, food and camping
NavForge can drop fuel stops, food, hotels, campsites and attractions onto the map as coloured badges. It all comes off the region you’ve downloaded, so it works with the phone in flight mode — and it behaves differently once you start navigating.
The badges are the POI layer. Tap one and this panel slides up with the distance and bearing from where you are, and two things you can do with it.
When a stop has no name in the map data, the category is shown on its own — which is common for rural fuel and camping.
Turning the layer on
The buttons run down the right-hand side of the map. The POI button is the third one down, a map-pin shape. There’s no text label and no tooltip on it, so the only way to know which is which is by the icon and by trying it.
-
Tap the pin button on the right
The ring and icon turn yellow while the layer is on. A yellow spinner sits in the button while it loads.
-
Pan or zoom to look around
Every time the map settles, the badges are re-fetched for whatever you’re now looking at. Zoom out far enough and you’ll hit a ceiling — up to 500 places per downloaded region.
-
Tap a badge
The panel opens with the name (if the place has one), the category, and how far away it is.
-
Tap the pin button again to clear them
The layer comes off and the map is back to normal.
Whether it was on when you closed it makes no difference — it isn’t remembered. If you rely on it, turning it on becomes part of your start-of-ride routine.
The five categories
Each badge is a coloured circle with a white ring and an emoji in the middle. The colour is the category:
- ⛽ Fuel — yellow ring. Shown in the panel as Fuel Station.
- 🍴 Food — orange ring. Food & Drink.
- 🏨 Hotel — blue ring. Accommodation.
- ⛺ Camping — green ring. Camping.
- 📍 Attraction — pink ring. Attraction.
There is no filter. You can’t ask for camping only, or hide the hotels. It’s all five or none.
You’ll see the badge and the colour, and nothing else. The name only appears once you tap it. On a screen full of fuel stops, that means tapping each one to see which brand it is — worth knowing before you go looking for a label that isn’t coming.
What happens when you start navigating
This is the one to remember. If the POI layer is on when you begin turn-by-turn navigation, it quietly narrows itself to fuel only, and only within roughly five kilometres of you. Food, hotels, camping and attractions vanish.
Nothing on screen tells you this has happened. The button stays yellow and looks exactly the same. When navigation ends, all five categories come back on their own.
At the moment navigation starts, the map zooms out to fit your whole route. Without the clamp, every café and campsite along a 300 km ride would land on the map at once. Fuel within a few kilometres is what’s actually useful while you’re moving.
Navigate here, or save it for later
Navigate here sets the place as your destination and opens the route planner. If you haven’t set a start yet and your GPS has a fix, your current position is used automatically.
Save as marker keeps the spot as one of your own markers so it’s there next time, and puts a pin on the map straight away. The category carries across as best it can — a fuel stop becomes a Fuel marker, food becomes Food, camping becomes Campsite, an attraction becomes Scenic. Hotels have no matching marker category, so they’re saved as Custom. You’ll get a short confirmation naming the category it used.
It’s all offline
The POI layer never touches the internet. It reads the fuel-food-camping database that came down with your map region, so it works the same in the middle of nowhere as it does at home.
With no region downloaded — or if that region’s POI file is damaged — the button still turns yellow and the map stays empty. There’s no error and no explanation. If you tap it somewhere you know has fuel and get nothing, check under Download Maps that the region for where you’re standing is actually installed.