Friday, 13 November 2015

Running out of routes

Thursday walks with Pete continue. Yesterday I was able to put the OS mapping on my new iPhone 6s Plus to the test. I have bought Memory Map OS Great Britain Complete at 1:25,000 in addition to the 1:50,000 which I already had. In the past I have not favoured the 1:25,000 because, even though the scale is larger, a lot of the print is small and difficult to read. With iPhone the map can be magnified enabling easy reading of even the tiniest detail, and that combined with the huge advantage of showing field boundaries now makes it a winner. Another amusing feature is the illusion of travelling faster over the ground on the larger scale. The only remaining disadvantage is that I do not get a good mental picture of the lie of the land, but it is easy enough to switch back to 1:50,000.

I have been using a combination of the old iPhone 3 and my iPad Mini. The phone screen was a bit small and the iPad a bit cumbersome. The new iPhone Plus with its 5.25inch screen is ideal, fitting into map pockets in my various jackets and shirts, and I have bought a waterproof pouch and lanyard (Vansky - IPX8 certified to 100ft) - I reckon that should cover me for the kind of walks I do, but I have doubts about 100ft being adequate for a TGO Challenge - some of those Scottish bogs...

Pete’s rheumatoid arthritis has improved over the months with the treatment he  receives, but we are keeping walks to under 5 miles, and also, in view of saturated fields and muddy paths, we are keeping to Tarmac. I am running out of routes near enough to home to be practical with those parameters, and this Thursday we did a rare repeat. Fortunately I had little recollection of the walk.

I have just looked back at the post and find I was holding forth on the subject of finding new routes then. Click to have a look if you want.

"Where to Next" Jan. 2014

I see also I took the same picture of the River Mint this time, and oddly, the same picture of the same moss covered wall, also photos of stone stiles on both occasions, but I had no memory of the close proximity of pylons to our route. 

This time I was attracted by the long ridge on the south of Borrowdale which I ran a few years ago and also walked on a  fine day with daughter, High Horse.

Old screenshot of Memory Map on my computer showing the many routes we have walked. There are more that got deleted, and others outside this area

River Mint near Patton Bridge - this and the moss covered wall almost identical to photos shown on post January 2014

Moss covered wall - similar photo last time intrigued my American readers


As we approached I reckoned these two pylon lines crossed, one running under the other which is unusual but confirmed a little further on - click to enlarge



Whinfell Tarn (again)

Blue is our Patton Bridge route (clockwise)
Red dots show the fine south Borrowdale ridge. There is a good return track back down Borrow Beck


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6 comments:

  1. gimmer13 November 2015 at 16:22

    i bet that no instruments or gadgets would be reliable under that tangle of power cables - compasses would spin madly - but maybe you could charge your devices simply by running round in a ring of diameter the correct wavelength for the unit to hand - make sure you are well earthed, though.
    You must come north a bit - a huge range of walks right from the front door(s) !

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  2. Sir Hugh14 November 2015 at 09:22

    gimmer - brilliant! Your grasp of science, way beyond your chemistry speciality continues to impress. On top of that you created a wonderful mental picture of me running round that circle, except that I wouldn't have had the slightest notion of the application you outline. Radio waves (and Bluetooth) are just from the world of Magic as far as I am concerned. A lot of science is difficult enough, but when you can't see it...

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  3. Anonymous14 November 2015 at 16:37

    Conrad,
    That first map looks like a wall chart from the last war.Seems like you've invaded most of the area.
    What do the skull and crossbones indicate?

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  4. Sir Hugh14 November 2015 at 17:30

    BC - good job WW2 didn't get that close to Windermere. Memory Map has a range of different symbols to show "marks". I have a system of using different ones to mark different hill top definitions, e.g. Marilyn's, trig points, Munros etc. Unfortunately I then forget which symbols I have used for what, ah well!

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  5. Alan Sloman14 November 2015 at 21:04

    Your map made me smile!
    I too have an almost identical map of the patch where I live. And an even more densely packed version of where I used to live.
    And Scotland, of course... But you'll have a crazy one of that!
    :-)

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  6. Sir Hugh15 November 2015 at 09:32

    Alan S. - There is similar coverage on adjacent areas, and many more walks that were never plotted on the map, but that screenshot is history. When I updated my virtual (Parallels) PC on the Mac from Windows XP to 7 I lost all those overlays on Memory Map. That is partly why we did a repeat route because I just can't remember all the walks we have done.

    In Scotland there are far fewer - I rarely plotted Munro routes. I have visited Scotland often, but unfortunately not often enough to give that kind of saturation coverage.

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