Strava has recently published its annual report. Like last year it reports a huge increase in users - globally 2 million people join every month, here in the U.K. 17% of the population now use the app. I can’t find a thank you to OSM mappers in the report but nevertheless I think we can take a lot of the credit for its success. The app and all its runners, walkers and cyclists are dependent on the paths and roads that we have mapped and are still mapping. They must surely be one of the biggest groups of OSM users.

My mapping of the paths used by cyclists has evolved over the years. If there are other keen cyclist mappers out there I’d be grateful if you would have a look at this post and say if you feel it is reasonable. My cycling friends and family use apps like Strava and Komoot to log their rides and increasingly to suggest routes. These same friends often have more than one type of bike - maybe a road bike, a gravel bike, a trail bike and sometimes a specialised downhill rig. Some of the apps will suggest different routes depending on which bike you specify. I’m not sure how these apps judge which paths are suitable when they are creating, say, a ’gravel’ ride but I would think the surface, smoothness and mtb_scale tags would be important. I now try to give all the cycleable paths that I map a smoothness tag and if they aren’t asphalt or concrete I give them an mtb_scale tag as well. Studying the descriptors for the different smoothness values makes me think : If the trail was ‘excellent’, ‘good’ or ‘intermediate ’ I would be happy on my road bike. If it was ‘bad’ I would prefer a gravel bike. If it was ‘very bad’ I would prefer a trail bike. If it was ‘horrible’ I would still use a trail bike but I would be up on the pedals and concentrating! If it was ‘very horrible’ I might ride it, downhill only, probably on a full sus rig. Studying the descriptors for the mtb_scale values, both on the OSM wiki and elsewhere, I think I would use a gravel bike if it was 0, a trail bike if it was 1, a trail bike but up on the pedals if it was 2 and downhill only on a full sus bike if if it was 3. So although they are measuring slightly different things there is a sort of equivalence between the smoothness values and the mtb_scale values for the non-asphalt trails. And I am now using this when mapping. For example if I look at a path and think it’s too rough for my gravel bike but it would be straightforward on a trail bike I will map it as Smoothness=Very Bad and MTB_Scale=1. Does that seem reasonable? I’d be grateful for any thoughts from other mapping cyclists.

It’s now 3 years since I started mapping the footpaths near Sheffield. In that time the project has clarified. I now have a rough circle drawn around Sheffield on an OS map. It has a radius of about 10miles. Within that area I am trying to complete the mapping of all (or as near to all as I can get) of the countryside paths. I have completed the western half of the circle. I have found that less than half of the paths were mapped to the north and west of the city but some areas to the south of the city are almost completely mapped. My method is to take a small area of countryside, usually enclosed by roads and spend a day surveying and mapping all the paths in it. I map on my phone as I go using Go Map!! When I’m happy that all the paths are mapped to a reasonable standard I colour in that sector on the OS map. At the moment I am heading east and south from Wath Upon Dearne and heading east from Dronfield. If I keep going at the current rate I estimate that I will have coloured in the whole circle by 2023. That is if I don’t get distracted by other mapping projects. So far the footpath mapping has been interrupted by periods of post box mapping around Sheffield and more recently by defibrillator mapping.