French Supermarkets as SatNav POI

This is the time of year when many British people head over to the continent for their summer holidays.

One of the most visited pages on this site is my blog post giving information on how to obtain an electronic device allowing you to sail through the motorway toll booths in France, and pay later on account (by credit card).

It's time for another service to the British travelling public. Here are some download files that you can use to set up your TomTom SatNav to help you find stores of some of the major supermarket chains in France. The information is taken from the stores' websites, so this is only as accurate as those sites are. Yes, I'm sorry - I only know about TomTom, but there are free online tools that will convert TomTom files (.ov2) into the formats expected for other SatNavs. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

To install these to your TomTom Sat Nav:

1. Download the file you want.
2. Unzip them on your computer. (Helping you with that is beyond the scope of this post).
3. If you have an older TomTom, connect it to your computer. You can then browse the contents of your device as if it were an external drive on your computer. One of the folders is named after your current map (e.g.,: Western Europe). Drop all the files that you unzipped (each zip file contains 3 files) into that folder.
4. If you have a newer unit, you have to use the MyTomTom application, and then use "Add Community Content" then "Add POI", and browse to add the 3 files you extracted from the zip file.

Done.

Enjoy - click on the icons below to download. In order of size, they are:

Magasins-U (842 stores)*
 E.LeClerc (557 stores)
Carrefour (192 stores)
Auchan (123 stores)

* For Magasins-U, I've included their Super-U and Hyper-U branded stores, but not their smaller, mainly in-town, Marché-U, stores. That's because this list is to help people find the large out-of-town supermarkets; there are smaller shops dotted all over France, and you'll just find the ones near to where you are, rather than seek out a particular brand of shop.